QuoteThat's why I hate games that make it really hard for PCs to die, or GMs who won't let your character die.

What do you guys reckon?

The short answer is, as always, it depends. There are plenty of games in which death is simply not a meaningful stake. The death of the protagonist(s) through violent means is not on the table in a wide variety of fiction.

The GM thing is part of a more general problem of the GM interfering with player decisions. How do you reconcile this with your stance on dice-fudging?

Quote from: droogThe GM thing is part of a more general problem of the GM interfering with player decisions. How do you reconcile this with your stance on dice-fudging?

It's all about avoiding the "random stupid."

As I've said before, I consider the dice to be for inspiration, not determination (of course they're for determination as such, but the dice aren't God, is what I mean). The randomness can be inspirational, but it can also be stupid.

I believe in fudging the dice to remove "random stupid" results - anything that's likely to make a player say, "what the fuck?" and be annoyed. Essentially, the random stupid ruins the suspension of disbelief.

But I mean, if a character charges in against a dozen foes, if they back off when injured and their foes leave them alone but they go back to fight them anyway - then a death they get isn't random stupid, they chose the chance of it.

For example, this same character was once climbing through a window, sneaking in to search someone's room. I said, "the window is eight feet above the ground in a stone wall. You don't have to make a roll to climb it if you take your time and don't care if you're seen."
"I want to be quick, and nobody sees me!"
"Okay, so you have to roll, then."
*clatter* "Critical failure."
Now, the game has falling rules somewhere or other. But I didn't use them, because with the way his luck was going his character would have broken his fucking neck. And that'd be not simply random, but random stupid. Instead I just said, "You reach up to the ledge but your fingers slip, you fall back with your arms flailing, tumble around in the air and face-plant the mud by the keep wall, breaking your nose."
That result preserves the "critical failure" part while not really ruining things for the player. Instead of "what the fuck? that's stupid!" we get humour, embarassment, fellow players laughing, and so on.

That's the theory, anyway. It usually works. Maybe Olive, one of my players who sometimes posts here, will show up and tell us.