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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4992372" data-attributes="member: 15538">That sounds like a potentially interesting exercise. However, here's the thing: If the Batman is not permitted to die, that either constrains Batman's potential actions or the Joker's permitted responses, probably both. If there are no actual restrictions, but actions that are obviously lethal to Batman occur and he does not die, the result is farce. Disallowing one potential outcome, despite the logical potential for it to occur, is an incomplete game. It's like a video game where you can walk off the map and fall forever. Imagine a situation where Batman drinks a bottle of Drano. After a sufficient number of suicide attempts for his remorse over killing the Joker's minions, for instance, the GM will eventually, sadly let Batman die, despite his other intentions. His only other choice is to suspend the player's control over Suicidal Batman. Thus, illusionary play is illusionary even to the GM. If the player cannot make a meaningful choice with his PC, play is likely to degenerate as soon as this is sensed or discovered. The only way for this play out with a satisfying ending is for the GM to surrender their role of impartial arbiter of the game world and for the player to surrender their role of impersonating a character through actions, and for both to become collaborative storytellers. That is not "a different play style" or a "personal preference" but actually playing a different sort of game. Collaborative storytelling games, or freeform roleplaying, is a hugely popular hobby, and in fact, Google will find just as many of those "role-playing game" as the kind played here in EN World. But it is a different kind of game with different constraints. What I call "storytelling RPGs," like Vampire or most heavily rule-zeroed games, are distinct from "fantasy wargames" like traditional D&D or Champions. One emphasizes poetric tropes, the other realistical resolution. Many games, in actual play, vary between the extremes on a continuum. They are both, however, members of the same family of games, traditional RPGs. The big umbrella definition of role-playing includes not only traditional RPGs, as well as freeform games, roleplaying activities used in therapy, improv acting, and lots of other activities. Only traditional RPGs relate to the game as found between pages the pages of a roleplaying game. It is certainly permissible to write a traditional RPG that precludes death in all but certain predefined circumstanes. You can run just about any RPG with modifications to work that way. For instance, you might deliberately fudge die rolls to keep PCs alive on their last legs except in dramatic conflicts. However, if PC actions that are out-of-bounds for the story are actually impossible, you are no longer playing a RPG. If Batman is immortal, caught in some Groundhog Day like situation where he must defeat the Joker at some point, the assumptions have been changed. While on the surface, it looks like a tabletop roleplaying game, in reality, it is a freeform roleplaying game more akin to a play-by-post game on some Harry Potter fansite somewhere than to D&D, Vampire, or Fate. Illusionary game are not liberated RPGs, or higher-level RPGs, or more story-oriented RPGs. In the extreme, they are misleadingly packaged freeform roleplaying games. Why not put the cards out on the table? But even with more moderate illusionary devices, there is a practical limit to how much you can bend before it breaks. Unless you are actually willing to make it impossible for Batman to die or for Frodo to start fleeing for the farthest corners of the world, you cannot privilege your plot without breaking the game.</blockquote>

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