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Originally Posted by whswhs
Edit: But you know, I'm wondering: Seriously, would any of you guys set out to play in a campaign that involved the kind of activities this Dan Daly fellow lived through, and think that was "adventure"?
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Yep.
Most of my PCs have been the sort who'd risk their lives to save someone else and it seems that somehow, PCs are in situations several times per session where a reasonable person might hide and call for assistance, but a PC who refuses to let potential bad things happen to others without trying to help has a serious chance of death or career ending injury.
In games I run, there is often the option of avoiding violence, never offending someone powerful and ruthless and being willing to let others die in your place while you hide and wait for the authorities. Oddly, however, few PCs choose this path consistently.
It seems that people don't usually play RPGs to be the guy in a hostage situation who calmly waits for SWAT to solve the problem as they carefully avoid drawing the attention of the hostage takers and try to remain anonymous. They want to be John McClane. They'll accept a world where being John McClane is really difficult and requires the cooperation of several Diet McClanes rather than one Awesomely Powerful McClane, but they will usually not accept being the characters who watch the terrorists shoot other hostages and react only by trying to fade better into the background so they aren't the next ones to be picked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
Or is this just a thought experiment? You seem to think a statistically accurate model of this would be to have a PC die every three sessions, which seems to imply about a 5% death rate for every span of time represented by a single RPG session; that seems like it could amount to an insanely high death rate, not to mention the accompanying crippling injuries, mental breakdowns, and simple wounds.
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Well, absent very powerful magic, PCs often operate in small groups without dozens of people with million dollar equipment ready to provide fast medevacs when they are wounded, so being seriously wounded and being killed are often the same thing.
Other than that, this is an accurate estimate of many campaigns featuring combat at about the rate of typical action-adventure roleplaying. PCs don't
actually die that often, because you really shouldn't try to play action-adventure protagonists without Luck.