Is Story Death dead?

[Hester]

There was a question in the “Fabled – Is the topic socially shareable?” thread that mentioned this:

And also are the responses, “Just give the monster a Fabled, they’ll be back in six weeks,” appropriate, and Is that knowledge characters would know? Would characters feel like they should be providing the monster with a Fabled, knowing that in six weeks the Fabled will return unharmed?

I’d like to make a general inquiry here: Is story death no longer a thing?

Recent events have someone saying that if it’s not “mechanically possible”, then there should be literally zero chance of harm/death/anything weird. People die, and then someone says “oh, just throw them charon coins and feed them to the new monster ezpz” or “if they’re not resurrected, then that’s their own choice” rather than death or being kidnapped by a monster being a scary, uncharted territory with unknown outcomes.

I understand that the genre of the game has shifted to a blend of heroic horror and gothic horror, so please let me know if I’ve just missed or misunderstood the whole shift of roleplay culture here.

[Ouroboros]

Resurrection is unreliable, gets more expensive each time, and the death is still often traumatic and leaves lasting damage on someone’s mind/memories etc. So I’d say if people were RPing that the risk of death doesn’t matter they are being fairly silly.

It is both bad to RP that someone cannot die in situations where IC death seems reasonable but is codedly impossible, and bad to try to force someone to be dead outside of the mechanics of the game that govern death.

This is also true in other forms of story telling where you may not be able to actually kill off the main character without tanking your tv show but still want a story where they seem in peril.

I’m not sure I entirely understand the question but that’s my best effort to respond to it.

[Author]

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