Hit Points...to be, or not to be?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Why a GM chose to include a scenario where certain death (of a PC or a NPC) is necessary? Maybe is a plot device (damn you Salazar, I will have my revenge!) maybe is a teaching moment (never wake up a sleeping dragon!) maybe is the climax of a story (where all bets and brakes are off).

I personally don't like the genocide level of killing there is classic fantasy roleplay games: I like instead to build my scenarios around moral and ethical challenges, and then let the players chose their own path around (or through) it. In my games the fights are quite scarce (no more than one or two for session) and they are almost always because of PC choices: so I design them to be challenging, dangerous and interesting in an effort to make them memorable.

On one hand, you seem to think that the GM decides at the outset, "In this session [or in this adventure], someone is going to die." And that's a much more controlling approach to running adventures than I would ever use. I don't necessarily even plan that there will be a fight, or a confrontation with physical danger; I confront the PCs with situations, and how they approach them is up to the players.

On the other hand, if the PCs do decide to get into a fight, there is always risk. A PC may be killed outright; or they may endure permanent crippling; or they may fail a Fright Check and be left psychologically impaired. The willingness to take a chance of these things happening is, among other things, a source of drama; it asks the players, "Does your character care enough about X to risk permanent impairment?" It's the "skin in the game" that puts tension in an RPG.

And on the other other hand, you don't need "genocide level" for this. Quite a small chance of permanent consequences can still provide that underlying tension.