Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
G/N/S theory has its problems, but this is a prime example where it describe something relevant, because that's basically a narrativist way of looking at PC death.
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On the other hand, I don't think it's the only narrativist way of doing so.
My view of narrative is that it leads up to climactic scenes where protagonists take decisive actions with a great deal at stake, where in effect the question is, "What price are you willing to pay to attain your goal/preserve your values?" And in an RPG, that question is asked by rolling the dice
when failed rolls lead to truly bad consequences: that is, when there is really good reason for the dice to come out. Ideally, the player who picks up the dice is narratively declaring that their character is ready to risk losing something important to get what they want. And one of the most important things a character can lose is their own survival. In fact, that's not only a loss in the game world, for the character, but a loss for the player, who can no longer play that character.
I don't often have PC deaths; I think I've had three in the past quarter century. But my players have always been convinced that their characters COULD die. And I think this has led them to play their characters not as toons, and not as reckless fools who constantly take insane chances, and also not as Godzilla stomping on a succession of Bambis, but as rational people who sometimes face risks because the alternative is worse. I think that's more dramatic.
And to get this result, on one hand, I avoid fudging dice rolls; and on the other, I don't allow players to just bring in a clone after their character dies.
This isn't to say that everyone else has to do it that way. This is the way I like to do it. But what I am saying is that I think my underlying rationale for doing things this way can be called "narrativist" as plausibly as Mark's rationale for his quite different approach. There's more than one type of narrative.