Dear players,
I'm writing for you this letter in response for the last one you've sent me. You said that you want to feel like heroes and heroines, that you want to feel more than just the anticipation for another victory, that you want the game to feel far more epic and interesting and...
I want to deliver for you just that. You're my players, and I want to give you the best. But I want something from you too, in order to achieve that: I want you to stop being afraid of failures. Failure is not a dirty word, and failing sometimes doesn't make you a group of failures.
I want you to stop being afraid from that, but more than that, I want you to let yourself fail. Drama is not about succeeding, it's about overcoming obstacles. If you're gonna win no matter what, there's no drama, and none of us will really enjoy the game.
I promise you, I'll do whatever I can to raise the drama in order to make the story better. All I ask from you is to do your part too; to improve as much as I improve; to strive for drama as much as I strive for it (and I know that you do, just please bring it into the surface); To accept failure as much as I accept it and to let yourselves fail as much as I let myself fail.
After all, failing doesn't make you failures, fearing from it makes you less of the winner type.
Thanks,
Your humble GM
I was running a campaign where the players ran from a confrontation before it even started. They were tasked with saving the life of the mother of one of the PCs who was going to be falsely executed publicly. They ran and got out of the city as fast as they could because they were afraid. Could they have succeeded? Yes. Could they have failed? Yes.
ReplyDeleteAnd it would have been an epic scene. But they never got a chance to be a part of the epic moment because of fear.
Thanks for your comment.
DeleteI know what you're talking about. The amount of times that I've encountered things like that from my players... How did you handle it afterwards? Did they explain to you why they've let the mother to be executed?
I guess also that it was from fear, but maybe there was another thing in their heads, like a thought about what their characters should do or something...
Thanks again for your comment.