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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deadguy" data-source="post: 1366139" data-attributes="member: 2480">I've been following this thread with some interest, since I am in the position of playing (albeit not all D&D) with several groups, and they treat this exact point in a variety of ways.  One group, where we play both Mage: the Sorcerers Crusade and Shadowrun, the focus is very much on character development, interaction, and exploring character history. As such we operate under a rule that effectively says: so long as you behave as though your character might die at any time, the DM won't kill you! I know some people would find this very strange, and artificial. Certainly when we had a new person join the group, he had great difficulty coming to terms with the mindset. But it really does allow the players to behave 'in character' without fearing that the DM will punish them for doing so. And as more than one story has demonstrated, there are far worse things than dying!  On the other hand, I am also in a group playing D&D, where the dice fall as they will. So far we have had one character death, due to poor tactical planning (and some bad luck: two AoO's from the orcs, two criticals for near max damage!). The DM has admitted he's fudged the dice once, when an encounter turned out to be far nastier than intended. But we've had the suggested range of encounters from the DMG, meeting things that were pushovers to deal with, through to things that took good planning and play to flee from.  Now for me, I enjoy both. But I admit that I feel closer to the characters I play in the first group. I can afford to expand on personality quirks, and make 'poor' choices, making the character feel far more rounded. Then again, in M:tSC our aim is not to produce adventurers, but Mages, with all the strange consequences of being different, set against a backdrop of a pseudo-Renaissance version of Earth. I enjoy the character in the second game, but knowing that he might die keeps me from investing too much effort and emotional energy getting deeply under his skin.  Ah well, horses for courses! Thank goodness I have a variety of choices of play.</blockquote>

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