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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5374488" data-attributes="member: 4937">Is it?Is there any other class of game out there that is all about getting what you want out of the game?  Chess?  Poker?  Monopoly?  Dominion?  Pac Man?Even in Solitaire we have to accept that sometimes we don't win the game.  Games are interesting primarily because we don't always get what we want of them.  That's why we play them.  They are hard, but fair.  If we always got what we wanted out of them, they'd cease to be games.The problem with this is that at some point, the DM has taken full control over this story and left the players pretty much only observers.  Also, the player's can just ignore or blow off the consequences.  They have a gaurdian angel that will rescue them from their choices.  It doesn't matter what happens, they are going to wake up the next day, bailed out of whatever situation they found themselves in.  Whatever the aftermath may be, they can be bailed out of that eventually too.  I suppose that its possible that freed from the need to ever worrying about their own deaths that they find something else to care about, but I find it just as likely that freed from worry about their own deaths they'll not worry to much about anything but their own glory.   They live in a world that is neither hard nor fair, and which doesn't seem to follow the rules associated with a game.   If I know that death isn't possible, you can gaurantee I'm going to fight to the death no matter what I percieve the odds to be.  Retreat?  I laugh at the grim reaper!  Surrender?  Not in this lifetime!  Negotiate?  Over my dead body!In most RPGs, the GM tries very very hard to balance the situations that the players find themselves in such that these situations are slightly in the players favor (although, the good DM makes most of these situations in fact look overwhelmingly in the foes favor).   The GM is forced to do this because if he doesn't, then quite soon the player's characters are dead and the game can't continue.   But the GM in a game where death is not a likely consequence of failure, need little concern himself with such things.   Regardless of the situation the player's find themselves in, the GM can rescue the players by fiat and then put them in some other situation by fiat.   Playing the game then is less about controlling the situation you are in, and more about generating the impromptu theater demanded when the director suddenly changes the scenario.   It's more like 'Whose Line is it Anyway?'Now, I'm not against consequences to failure that are less harsh and more nuanced than death.  I'm not against having varying degrees of victory or defeat.  Retreating, surrendering, being captured, suffering confinement, being maimed, being tortured, losing equipment, losing honor, witnessing the deaths of innocents, suffering the deaths of loved ones, betrayal and so forth are all things which I think can occur and sometimes make for interesting stories.   Sometimes they occur whether or not they make for interesting stories.  Sometimes they occur precisely because the alternative is clearly death.   Sometimes they occur by chance and ill-fortune.   There isn't anything wrong with that.  But if they occur by fiat, and if death doesn't occur simply because of DM fiat, then I do lose a bit of my emotional investment in the game and start to wonder why we make a pretence of simulation or game when telling the story since - in point of fact - it doesn't seem like we pay any attention to the simulation or game part that we are spending so much time working out to a nicety when it doesn't give us what we want.  Why don't we dispense with the rolling the dice, which is such a waste of time, and simply decide to have what we want?</blockquote>

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