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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4511474" data-attributes="member: 42582">As Malraux points out, there are at least two ways of communicating: ingame, and metagame. Metagame is typically easier. It's no surprise that 4e - a game expressly designed to reduce the preparation burden on GMs - has opted for metagame communication of risks.The second paragraph runs together risk in the real world with risk in the gameworld. It goes without saying that in "death flag" play the players do not run these things together. That is, they are happy to "step outside of the point of view" of their PC. "Death flag" play is metagame-heavy play.Exactly.And likewise the players don't want to believe that the PCs know they are in no real danger. Luckily, the players can easily bring about this result, because they get to determine (through the standard means that roleplayers use) what the PCs do and don't believe. And they can choose not to have their PCs break the fourth wall.And death flag mechanics don't remove the tautology - the PC faces risks in the gameworld, but the mechanics of the game mean that those risks are never realised unless a certain metagame constraint is satisfied (ie the player raises the death flag).But I assume that you really means something like "It is far, far easier to suspend your disbelief about potential risk to your character when the risk that your character faces in the gameworld is actually modelled by some randomness in the real world." And this is an empirical claim, not a tautology. What evidence supports it? As far as I know a lot of people are playing with death flag and similar mechanics and do not find it hard to play their PCs without breaking the fourth wall. It is no different from any other time that a player knows something that his/her PC does not.I don't know. But in the typical "death flag" game it wouldn't come up, just the same as in the typical 1st ed AD&D game the player of the high-level fighter won't deliberately flaunt the wackiness of the hit point rules by having his/her PC take head-first dives of 100' cliffs for fun."Death flag" mechanics, like any other set of RPG mechanics, presuppose that they are being used for a certain purpose and that the players won't set out to break them by turning them to another purpose for which they don't work.This is an entirely empirical matter. It depends upon such considerations as what motivates players to enjoy "death flag" mechanics and what options exist in the game for a player whose PC is paralysed. I don't find it very hard to imagine a death flag game in which paralysis of PCs is possible. To work well, however, it would probably have to be the case that the paralysis was only temporary in real life, which would mean either that it lasts only briefly in the gameworld also, or else that there is some way of accelerating the gameworld to the point at which the paralysis is lifted.If the real question is "Does thinking about the death flag make us wonder whether other deprotagonising mechanics should also be dropped from the game?" then the answer is Yes. But paralysis need not be a deprotagonising mechanic, depending how it is handled.</blockquote>

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