jeudi 15 janvier 2015

How much losing is still fun?

After a vacation of a lot of mostly non-RPG-gaming, I was thinking about the frequency of losing in RPGs. In board and card games, players lose a lot - like 75% of the time in a four-player. However, the games are still fun. Even in a cooperative game like Eldritch Horror or Shadows Over Camelot, it's common for there to be a more than 50% loss rate.



Even for old-school sandbox or Call of Cthulhu, my experience is that's kind of a lot. Characters may be hurt or die over the course of things, but it is definitely uncommon for an adventure to end with the PCs outright losing - such as running away with the mission unaccomplished and/or the main bad guy alive and triumphant. That's even built into many module series from the old days - where the next module can only be gotten to if the players succeed in the main mission.



It's been on my mind since in a number of times in my current beer-and-pretzels-y D&D5 campaign, we've teetered on the edge of TPK rather than just backing off and giving up the mission. We tend to mock the tendency of PCs to charge off to their death rather than run away - but I think this is pushed by GMs just as much as players. GMs and module designers don't expect or deal well with having the PCs go away without finishing.



Anyone have experience with a high loss rate that was still fun? Were there things that it needed to help keep things upbeat?



Alternately, what do you think might make a high loss rate still fun to play, hypothetically?





How much losing is still fun?

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