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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9755723" data-attributes="member: 6790260">While I understand that you see character death as absolutely necessary for any actions to have any meaning, there really are other perspectives. As someone who appreciates those other perspectives, I often feel frustrated by the disparaging terms used for such things. It's more complicated than "death is everywhere, thus real consequences" vs "no death whatsoever, thus zero consequences".Death is a very obvious and straightforward consequence. I find it is often not as interesting or impactful as other kinds of consequences. Much of fiction, in fact, is driven on the idea that characters will still get satisfying arcs--that they won't be killed by just any old thing, because we want to see things come to an interesting conclusion. That's not how real life works, to be sure, but neither heroic fantasy, nor murder-hole-delving for fantastical riches, is how real life works either, even when we exclude the supernatural elements. As a good example, in my experience, the point of combat is not whether you survive, but rather, whether you pay a price too great. There are times where survival is actually less valuable than completing the objective--and there are times where merely surviving would be at absolute best a Pyrrhic victory, and more likely a bitter defeat.This most certainly requires investment on the players' part and effort on the GM's part to produce meaningful, worthwhile consequences. But I think it is an effort well worth pursuing--and I believe that, in most cases, it produces a game that encourages players to truly care about what happens, rather than what I have seen too many times in games that focus too much on death as the only important consequence.</blockquote>

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