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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9758275" data-attributes="member: 75787">OK. I think I have this now. Bloodtide plays characters who prioritize their survival "far above" everything else. Any other consequence the GM might put into play is effectively trivial to them. That does make their argument consistent, but if feels very alien to my experience. It also feels like the least immersive way to play I can imagine. You, the player, have only one priority -- not dying. But your character is unlikely to be like that. Most actual people have things they would die for. Pretty much every fantasy hero does. So you are going to be continually at odds with your character -- that would be really hard for me to enjoy. Maybe Bloodtide just plays characters who all prioritize survival far above everything else?For me and for most people I know, they like to play characters with a stronger set of motivations. I want to play characters who will happily die for the queen; who will sacrifice themselves to preserve their nation; who consider defeating evil worth their own lives. Characters who absolutely do consider other losses worse than death. This is the very stuff of heroic fantasy and D&D! So given that a character would willingly die for what they believe in, it makes any conflict that they are involved with far more exciting and tense if the character's core goals are threatened, rather than just their life. When I read the part in LOTR where Smeagol and Frodo are struggling over the crack of doom, I'm not thinking "I don't care if they destroy the ring or not so long as Frodo lives" -- I'm rooting for Frodo to succeed at destroying the ring (thus saving the king, restoring law to the nation and defeating evil) and his survival is absolutely far, far below that goal in order of importance.In summary, I don't think playing characters who prioritize their own survival far above all other goals is the default assumption. It would bore me always to have the same main motivation for every character. Also, I like to play the role of my character as much as possible, and therefore as a player my goals of a conflict align with the character's goals. Thus, to support Bloodtide's view that character death is far above all other goals, I would need to either always play the same character, or stop immersive roleplaying during combat.Neither are very attractive options to me. Nor, I feel, to most people.</blockquote>

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