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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5276962" data-attributes="member: 18280">The points you make are certainly subsets of the overarching question:  How much plot protection are the PCs to have?  I.e., the more the game is to be the creation of a narrative, the more plot protection the PC need, and the more the game is an exploration of what happens, the less.For example, (1) it is obviously true that no matter how many "S"es you put before the oD (SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSoD), eventually there is an actual SoD at the end of it.  I am not aware of a single instance in any game I have ever played, as player or GM, even under the crappiest GMs I have ever known, where a player's decisions didn't have an impact on the game, nor any game where, at times, a single roll did not decide everything.  This has been brought up in previous discussions, and in all cases it has been demonstrated that player choices led to the fateful die being cast.  Personally, plot protection via player-controlled mechanics (APs, frex) are superior to excising the deadly effect, IMHO.  Or, worse yet, fudging them!(2) Is only true if certain types of deaths are deemed "satisfying" and "unsatisfying"; which is another way of limiting the acceptable narratives.  See comments on this upthread.(3) Disruption of the game is definitely a possibility, either in the narrative (see my comments re: narrativism), or at the table (see my comments re: encounter time and character creation time).It should be noted that your objects (2) and (3) have little to do with SoD, and are objections to the death itself.  In the case of (2), any death not agreed to by the player may be considered anti-climactic, or otherwise unfun.  The argument, therefore, rests on the rather shaky ground (1) supplies.  I would suggest that, if your characters are killed without making any choices leading to that death, you have deeper problems than whether or not the game includes SoD.Perhaps, though, by "choices" we mean "narrative choices" -- which, again, leads back to what I said earlier:  If your goal is to provide a particular type of narrative, SoD (without some form of mitigation, such as APs) is likely not for you.  Rather than bolster your goal, it works against it.The reason for the objection to character death is not, IMHO, to "cower away from a challenge" but to ensure that the mechanics bolster the desired game experience.  For some, the creation of such a narrative might be as challenging as others find exploration-type games.  I suspect, though, that the desire in this type of game is weighted toward discovery of the story rather than challenge per se.  (Indeed, the "challenging" subsystems typically mitigate that challenge so as to avoid damaging the narrative.  And they should do so, as it is the narrative which is the main goal!)IMHO, confusion arises when people don't consider the goals of the pasttime they are engaging in.  To some degree, challenge (the chance of failure) is contradictory to narrative (a preset outcome).  Deciding what you want, and how to balance these two well, requires both serious thought and honest self-appraisal.Obviously, you cannot as easily choose to play games that you like if you don't know what you like or why you like it.  Then there is the task of determining whether a ruleset supports your goals (nice!) or goes against them (requires modification of rules, or of goals, or the adoption of a different ruleset).It is also obviously true that if you mitigate undesierable outcomes you reduce challenge in proportion to your mitigation.  Which is, obviously, a good thing to the degree that "challenge" is not your main goal -- or is, in fact, antiethical to your main goal -- for playing.  And the more you reduce challenge, the greater control you give the players over narration.  It is up to each group to determine exactly where along the challenge-narrative axis they wish their game to fall.  There is no right answer, and there never has been a universal one.  We all fall somewhere toward the middle.Again, IMHO and IME.  YMMV.RC</blockquote>

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