Featured Post

Are You Afraid of Hurting Your Characters?

Written By James

Posted on March 3, 2010 


Medieval Knight24. Arguably one of the most popular television series of the last decade.

The premise is simple, each one-hour episode depicts an actual hour in the main character’s life. That character is Jack Bauer and over the course of 24 episodes (or 24 hours), he takes on the bad guys and averts national catastrophe by the skin of his teeth.

One of the reasons the show is so popular is because Jack gets hurts. He’s been shot, blown up, beaten up, tortured, even infected by a killer virus.

And that’s just the physical side of the abuse.

The psychological scars run deeper. In many respects, the level of pain and suffering this man has endured reaches the realm of the ridiculous. Yet imagine how boring and short-lived the series would be if the writers were afraid of hurting Bauer.

This is what happens in a lot of RPGs. Players tend to play things safe with their characters as they avoid conflict and any other potential situation where their …

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