The Common Factor between D&D, Mythology, Fiction, and Life: Horrible Death is Fun

[Dioltach]

I'd say that the common factor is more likely to be "risking a death but surviving, while the enemies suffer horrible deaths". Look at the traditional fairytales that play such an important role in our formative process, for example. Children love it when the hero is in danger, even though they've heard the story a hundred times before and know the hero will survive, and they lap it up when the giant or wolf or witch is disembowelled, eaten, burned alive or whatever.

 

[imurphy943]

As the Green Goblin said, "The one thing they love more than a hero is to see the hero fail. Fall." Tragedy is included to some degree most memorable stories, as seen in Hamlet, Reservoir Dogs, Star Wars, Code Geass, The Lord of the Rings, Sandman, MacBeth, Pulp Fiction, The Bible, and what we know of Norse mythology. There are stories that don't, such as Alice in Wonderland, and I enjoy them, but I don't reread them nearly as often and we don't remember any that are older than 300 years except the generic fairy tales. Meanwhile, the most successful children's stories are the ones that are almost indistinguishable from adult stories. I'm talking about Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Batman, Spiderman, X-Men, Pirates of the Carribean, The Hobbit, and Finding Nemo.

[MENTION=13]Darkness[/MENTION]
Dwarf Fortress definitely gets at least half the blame for this chain of thought.

 

[Sunseeker]

There are different levels of death that I believe are being overlooked in this summation.

The threat of death is a great motivator, but not always. In a high-death-rate game some players can be motivated to new heights. Others will take every excuse to stop and rest.

Tragedy is not limited to death. There can be serious injury, falls from grace, humiliations. Such things again, cause different reactions in different people.

Furthermore, death that isn't given meaning is just a waste of everybody's time. Death's like Boromir's are cool, death's like everyone who died to the zombie plague are rather boring.


The thing is, unless you're going to throw Joe out of your game when his character dies, the death of his character is, to quote Kael'Thalas, "Only a setback!" as Joe will return to the game next week with a new character. Throwaway characters are boring, deaths without meaning often come across as disrespectful.

I do agree that death can be an interesting aspect of the game, but I don't believe that the threat of death is what makes the game engaging.