PhoneLobster wrote:Which you WANT to define as a story where you can die but you also can't.
To rephrase, a story where you can die but you don't.
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I'd like to make a couple of observations:
1) There are stories that are driven by plot. These stories can have characters come and go as the important part of the story is not the characters, but the outcome of whatever event the storyteller has created. It doesn't matter who does the job; what matters is whether or not the job gets done.
2) There are stories driven by character. These stories usually focus on a few characters, and the events of the plot are significant largely because of the impact they have on the characters. It doesn't really matter what the job is; what matters is how doing that job shapes the characters doing it.
If you want a game that's in the spirit of option two, the game is over when the character is over. If the entire point of the game is the characters and how they've transformed into heroes or villains, then actual real death of the characters is the end of the story. Game over.
But no interesting hero or villain was ever created by having nothing affect them. To get to be different enough that they were worth paying attention to, they had to experience some sort of challenge or revelation or pain or something that caused a transformation from ordinary person to hero (or villain).
I submit that it's the illusion of death/illness/weakness/bad stuff that the players in a character driven game want. It's Claire Bennet making that first jump where she thought there was no way she could live, but realized once she'd splattered herself on the ground that there was something about her that kept her from dying. She faced the illusion again when she went all bad-ass on the Company because she thought her father was dead, even though he wasn't.
As far as I can see it, you can accomplish the goal of making events less deadly either by patching the rules so that situations are actually less deadly, or by creating scenarios that look more lethal than they actually are.