Abstracts of a Town Hall discussion.

Sorry, that sounds really hokey to me ... (Don't take that personally, it's probably a function of my background in more competitive simulation games).

Imagine an early or low-level character who willingly attacks a tyranosaurus (or some-such dumb violent creature) without provocation. Should the character's survival be forced, because the character has room for growth? Even if it's "in character", isn't a certain death-wish inherent in such a character?

I still think that if a player puts a character in a situation where they are likely to die, they should not be "annoyed" when it happens.

I hope I never said that deaths should be introduced just to show how grim a game is - I've certainly complained about such games enough to their dms - what I hope I said was that death serves an important function in games, of adding risk to endeavours that players get into.

I think the most memorable occasions I have had are where, through choice a character has risked death and won through. Admittedly, it's quite possible the dm has cut some slack because characters have been doing something heroic.

The same character mentioned above, if charging the tyrannosaur to save a friend (or for some other game/growth prompted reason), and attempting to do it in a sensible way should not be just called dumb and removed from the gene pool with a backhand from the tyranosaur.

George Smith