![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Tasks either can be repeated over and over ((“I do exactly the same thing that didn’t work last time, but harder!”)), or have immediate, irrevocable negative consequences ((“Natural one, huh? Well, I guess that medusa has a new fighter statue for her garden. Is that a disintegrate spell? Save or die. And again, until either you open the lock or a trap kills you. That mindset translates into other tasks in the games. This is because so many of the obstacles a character faces in an RPG are combats, and the general expectation is that the combat will be balanced to allow the heroes to overcome their foes, so it is only bad dice luck ((And sometimes poor tactics.)) that kills PCs. )), the basic assumption is that, if they fail, they die. But, in the long history of RPGs-as-written, ((I’m going to be focusing on D&D in these examples, because it is the most universal touchstone that gamers have, and also really illustrates my point. Now, I’m not saying that it is mechanically impossible for the characters in RPGs to fail. And this is where one of the biggest differences between the two forms appears, because in fiction, characters can fail, but in RPGs, they can’t. In both fiction and RPGs, the basic formula for story is that the characters face obstacles and try to overcome them. While I contend that RPGs don’t necessarily generate stories, characters still have a lot of the same qualities and requirements for us to enjoy them. I’ve been thinking about character arcs in fiction and in roleplaying games. ![]()
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