I've been giving this some thought lately, especially in light of recent events in the Faalor campaign world. The question is "Should PC's ALWAYS win?" and the answer is, in my opinion, an emphatic "No."
My conclusion is derived from the following:
1. PCs are the central characters is a morality play, where failure has to be a reasonable outcome or else there could be no morality involved ("you mean the world would have been destroyed whether I acted cowardly or bravely?").
2. PCs are free moral agents.
3. While role-playing, consequences of all actions (NPC and PC) should be allowed to play out as "realistically" as possible.
4. PCs are heroes who's actions matter to the greater world, whether in small ways or large.
5. Winning and loosing are not the material goal of role-playing (rather, playing a role is).
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2 comments:
In my campaigns, I tend to think of it as "No" as well, but with a qualification - none of my characters will lose or die pointlessly. If the characters are going to lose, I want them to lose fighting - I want their deaths to be meaningful and dramatic. I want them to have just as much fun (or as much fun as possible) losing as they would winning.
For instance, the "bad ending" to the first Fallen campaign would've been a hold-the-line style fight for Azderan. It wouldnt've been possible to win, but I would've let the characters fight for as long as they could. I might've even allowed people to escape Azderan depending on how long the characters managed to survive - to show the sacrifice of the characters meant something.
So, I guess the short answer is, no, PCs should not always win, but they should always have fun, and unless they're completely incompetent, they should be given the chance for noble, dramatic defeat.
I can agree with that. I would qualify that too: "players should always have a good chance to win". Dying pointlessly could be enterataining; I never set up situations where the players would be required to die pointlessly or even loose items, allies or in some game mechanic way. The point is, should a PC loose, I always want the PC to have a chance to go down swinging.
Now, it's interesting you bring up the issue of incompetence. I'll have to give that some thought.
Hmm I'll have to qualify "having fun" though in some future blog post.
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