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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7731409" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've been playing RPGs for a long time - over 30 years - but I haven't played that many games. But even across my current active campaigns - D&D 4e, Burning Wheel, Cortex+ (both MHRP and Fantasy Hack) and Classic Traveller - there are counterpoints to nearly all the confident assertions on this thread about how RPGing has to be. And it's not as if any of these games is especially radical in its play or its design.Cortex+, in both the versions I'm playing, tends to be combat-heavy (either superhero combat or fantasy combat); and it has virtually no chance of PC death.That doesn't mean there are no stakes. In our fantasy game, one session had, as it's concluding scene, the PCs confronting dark elves at the bottom of a dungeon they had been trapped in by a crypt thing. One PC was knocked out by the drow; two others defeated the drow and rescued their companion. The fourth PC, meanwhile, had charmed one of the drow and was led by her to the treasure chamber, which he was able to loot to his heart's content.At the start of the next session, the PCs were in two groups: the three who had had to trudge their way out of the dungeon and back towards civilisation (that all happened off-screen); and the one who had been shown the way out by the drow, and had been living on the fat of the land for a month or so and still had a big purse full of gold pieces.The failure of the PCs to actually pursue the quest they had been sent on also meant that the end of days was getting closer.In mechanical terms, the PC who had successfully looted the drow had an additional, persistent asset at the start of the game which didn't have to be paid for; and the PCs' failure to make progress on their quest meant that the doom pool started with larger dice than it otherwise would have done.There you have a clear example of how a game can involve story losses without PC death being what is at stake; and how suffering those story losses can produce a definite change in the mechanical game state.A different example comes from Burning Wheel. As long as a player has an unspent persona point, s/he can guarantee that his/her PC won't die in combat (by spending the point to ensure survival of a mortal wound). Yet combat in Burning Wheel can be very dramatic: I'm thinking, for instance, of the series of combats in my game which resulted in the PC mage's brother being killed as an act of vengeance by another character before the PC could try and save him from demonic possession. That was not a mechanical change in the game state, but it was a very significant change in the fictional situation.(I've also seen a player spend that last remaining persona point to try and ensure victory in combat, because the player (and the PC) is committed to achieving the goal that is at stake in the combat.)I hope the above examples give a better sense of what I'm saying. I think the concept of a player having a "position" in the game is independent of whether the stakes are PC death; and is independent of whether the game involves direct competition between the players; and is independent of whether that position is expressed in mechanical as well as in-fiction terms, or is purely an in-fiction matter.Some ways in which a game can not have real consequences for player positions: the GM takes steps to make sure that events that befall the PCs don't matter to the ultimate direction of the fiction (I have seen this in modules, for instance, that suggest if the PCs fail to rescue the messenger and receive the message, then they might find a note on the assassin instead); or the GM takes steps to make sure that the decisions, and especially the failures, of the PCs don't make any difference to the state of the campaign world (I have seen this in modules which suggest that if the PCs fail at the ultimate challenge, some other GM-controlled entity or force suddenly inserts itself to solve the problem). I personally thinks this makes for very weak RPGing.If player positions are going to be defined in mostly in-fiction terms, then I think the fiction has to be quite compelling and engaging. I feel that a light-hearted game like Cortex+ heroic probably doesn't generate fiction that is compelling enough on its own; but (as I commented on in the example of play above) that system also invovles mechanical consequences for PC failure, like the doom pool stepping up.The idea that something being "subjective" means it's not a loss is very strange. In the real world, different people have different goals and standards for what counts as success in their lives - but that doesn't mean there's no such thing as doing well or badly in one's life!Of the systems I've mentioned above, Burning Wheel has a formal system for establishing PC goals in the course of play; Cortex+ heroic has something a little bit similar in its XP system; Traveller has a formal system for generating patrons, but there is no requirement within the game that players take their PCs commitments to their patrons seriously; and 4e doesn't have a formal system for PC goals at all. The existence of these systems is independent of whether or not "story losses" can occur, and matter to the players.The campaign my group has been playing most recently is Classic Traveller. This has many NPC interactions where there is little likelihood of the PCs' throats being slit; but the game still has resolution mechanics for such situations (reaction rolls; Admin skill; Forgery skill; Bribery skill; etc). And players can improve or weaken their positions, and make a broader difference to the fiction, by how those situations resolve in light of their action declarations for their PCs.I think that depends. In classic D&D play of the sort that Gygax describes in his PHB (under the heading "Successful Adventures"), and that Moldvay Basic is all about, frequent character death is to be expected, but this doesn't mean the players don't engage the fiction. Engaging the fiction, in these games, means mapping the dungeon as the GM describes it, trying to make sense of the puzzles (of layout; of secret doors; of cursed or bonus items and dungeon features; etc). But obviously you're not going to get an epic or dramatic story out of that sort of RPGing!If the engagement of the fiction that you want is more along the dramatic story line of things, then you need to adopt different techniques from what Gygax and Moldvay recommend. But I still think that meaningful player positions matter to this. If the GM is going to manipulate the fiction to ensure that player decisions and the outcomes of resolution ultimately make no difference to the resulting fiction, I think that players will be less likely to engage, as under those circumstances nothing turns on their engagement.That might be true in your game. It's not generally true in mine. Establishing meaningful stakes, making story losses possible, etc, all depend on the players knowing (more-or-less, within table-understood parameters, etc) what is going on in the ingame situation.</blockquote>

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