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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThoughtBubble" data-source="post: 1430725" data-attributes="member: 9723">This got longer than I expected, so I'll summerize: Death in a narrative or story based game with heavy backstory and character development sucks and is a massive setback. Death in a simulation where characters are mostly shaped by the battlefield events needs death as an integral consiquence.I've run and played in both extremes. On the one hand, I've been in several games where the only character death occurred as part of a hindsight view of a year passing. The player was ready to try something else, and actually came up with how her character died. Not to say that I fared much better, my character's evil ruthless side took over and he joined the enemies. That was a character development and interaction intense game. Because the game was built so strongly around the characters invovled in it and their problems, a death would have hurt very badly.And in that situation, there were far far worse things than death. Having to live with the consiquences of failing the people who were counting on me, dealing with the jeers, and the hatred, watching as my enemies spread their influence while I could do nothing, that was far worse than dieing. That was the consiquence of failure.In another game (diceless) everything was about building drama. The only way for a character to die was for his player to say that he died. Of course, the one time it happened, the two major factions in town went to war. Everyone was happy with the turn of events. In either situation, if a character just up and died, the game would have ground to a halt. Each character had a huge time investment in them, and the genere and style (highly storytelling based) was such that a death that wasn't dramatic was so out of style as to be unbearable.Now, for the other side. In one game I was in, we were stuck wandering in the wilderness for almost two weeks. During this time, we had two cans of soup per person, and no drinking water. No one suffered an ill effect. Thus, wandering in the woods without food or water was no longer threatining. Later is what cinched it though. While doing an odd excavation job, a sinkhole opened and two party members fell through it. Acting fast, I yelled for someone to get a rope, had the strongest guy around tie it to himself and secure himself as well as possible, and climbed down. One botched climb check later, I'm falling 12 stories to land on a slab of concrete. Did I mention that I was on the frail side? But ultimately, that would have been a good way to go "Died braving the unkown to rescue friends". Instead I had one hitpoint, and despite 'severly broken ribs' went on to climb through an underground complex, help dig our way out of a broken underground parking garage, and wander several days in the desert without food or water. It was hard to be afraid of running out of food, being lost, or being shot at after those expierences. It was espeically funny when the DM explained to us that we were out of food and water, and didn't know where to go, and I just looked at him blandly and said "we managed it last time."And I've had a ton more expierences like this. And in the games where that happened, my successes didn't feel like mine anymore. So I managed to trap a rabbit, but it doesn't matter. So I'm an awesome driver, but when anyone can do the driving moves requried to manage the situation I feel like there's no point to being awesome at it. There's no satisfaction of a perfectly executed escape from the room with the animated statue guardians when the owner comes in and escorts us out of the trap.And the problem is that there's a thin line between where not killing players ends and where tweaking things to make them more smoothly begins. And it's far too easy to make the victory something given instead of something earned. And winning the prize is so much sweeter when it's my first place award, not a 'thanks for playing' sticker.Those 'never going to die' games always had their best moments around when we did what we shouldn't have been able to, and the DM just looked at us wide eyed. However, backtracking for a moment, nothing sucks worse than winning or losing (or even worse) dieing from a single die roll. Getting a lucky crit is one thing, but winning on a daring use and appreciable application of skill is far better. On a mostly related tangent, I also found that players who believed that "a character should only die after repeatedly doing incredibly stupid things" typically were the ones doing the incredibly stupid things. The ones who were ok with dieing typically were willing to think things through a little more. Also, (and possibly unrelated) the players on the no dieing side also found the idea of a diceless or narrative game abhorrent. So it might just be them.</blockquote>

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