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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 2639420" data-attributes="member: 5328">That has to be balanced against the fact that Luke would not be Luke if he were dependably so lucky as to be able to count on being immortal. He is cool only while the audience (for a movie) or the player (for an RPG) are able to suspend their disbelief, and pretend that he is facing real risks.There is a nice balance to stike between illusion and reality when it comes to maintaining a perception of risk without losing characters, and it needs work from both sides of the GM screen. A GM can get away with a bit of stagecraft so long as the character-players co-operate by treating illusory risks as real, but I don't really think this can last forever. The PCs have to overcome dangers to be heroes, which means they can't avoid pushing on the scenes and props a little. And the players can't help learning from what results.I was going to start this paragraph 'the trick is', but I'm pretty sure that that would not have been right. The trick I use is to be pretty liberal with defeats and failures that are short of death, teh ultimate victory of evil, and the destruction of the Universe. That way I get to maintain my players' suspension of disbelief without trashing their investments in character background &c. Now that I think about it, perhaps that is a big part of the reason that I tend to avoid the Tolikeinesqe cliches of climactic battle for the fte of Arda.</blockquote>