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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5578619" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't know if we are talking at cross purposes. We are talking about quite different ways of approaching an RPG.I'm not sure how much your notion of "playing smart" overlaps with my notion of "expedience". I think there is probably at least some overlap. I quite like a game that makes non-expedient play viable. A trivial example - in the real world, it is never smart to use archery against a tank. But in the world of 4-colour comics it can be, if you are Hawkeye or Green Arrow. I like a fantasy RPG that supports at least that much deviation from "playing smart".Being chased by the law is certainly not, per se, shutting the PCs down. But there are any number of ways a GM can both set up and resolve such a situation. Depending on whether the GM is driven mostly by regard to his/her sense of ingame causal logic, or mostly by regard to what s/he thinks would make for a fun or genre-consistent plotline, or mostly by regard to what s/he thinks will most enliven the thematic concerns her players want to deal with, a very different game will result.As to getting killed in combat for doing stupid things - in my previous campaign, which ran for a little over 10 years, one PC died, very early in the campaign. In my current campaign, three PCs have died. In one case the party suffered a "TPK" at the hands of a cursed haunting set up by some goblins. A subsequent email conversation established that all but one of the players wanted to keep going with the same PC, and so the next session began with the party all captured by the goblins after being defeated by the haunting, except for the half-elf who was absent, presumed dead (and they could smell something dubious roasting on the goblin's fire), and imprisoned with a drow they didn't recognise (the new PC). In the case of the two other PC deaths, a quick discussion with the player again established a desire for the PC to keep going, and reasons for the Raven Queen to send the PC back into the land of the living (with various sorts of plot and thematic consequences) were quickly worked out.So I don't disagree that social conflict should have just as much at stake as combat. But I don't think of it in terms of PCs getting killed or getting into trouble. I think of it in terms of leading to results that drive the game forward.I think the expereince of play should always be positive for the players. They are playing to enjoy themselves.Given that I play a game that is a longrunning campaign with a single PC per player, that positive experience for the players means that they have to be pretty reliably able to engage the game (and hence the gameworld) via their PCs.The question of whether or not bad things happen to the PCs is orthogonal to that. Getting beaten to a pulp by a demon (as described upthread) is a bad thing. Having your newly acquired dwarven followers squashed by a behemoth is a bad thing (at least sort of, even if you also take a small degree of pleasure in some of them getting their comeuppance). Feeling you have no real choice but to join your companion in betraying your city is a bad thing (even if you can rationalise it away with a "greater good" argument).But all these bad things happening to PCs weren't bad things for the players of those PCs, because they were occurring in a context where the player was enjoying the RPGing experience, because being able to use the PC to engage the gameworld in a thematically relevant/expressive manner.EDIT: I like a game in which adversity for the PC is not per se adversity for the player. This requires the GM to frame the adversity for the PC in a certain sort of way.</blockquote>

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