Consequences: Are they Inconsequential

There was an article the other day about Reward and Consequence over at EN_World. To say that the article may have missed its mark a bit would be accurate. The author was clearly feeling a level of frustration with newer games and gamers. I understand this, because the games and the people playing them have changed over the last forty years. Hell, I have changed as a gamer, specifically a role player, over the last thirty plus years. I started as a player but then got bitten by the GM bug and kind of never looked back. Thank goodness for some other great GMs over the years where I have been able to play in their worlds.

All that side, the article did not in my opinion really discuss rewards or consequences and certainly not what the author thought made good consequences. Again the author seemed frustrated and it can be difficult to be logical in that kind of mindset. Regardless of the general merit of the content, the idea of the articles is a great one. We should be discussing Reward & Consequence in our games.

So here was my salient comment:

Consequences are almost entirely in the hands of the GM and to a lesser extent, the players.

A rule can say, define how mechanically a little troll mutant can chop the arm off of your super bad hoplite knockoff, but the GM decides how that rule is applied to the situation. The player decides whether their player seeks a new arm or lives with the wound or retires and is replaced by a new character. This has always been the case even in the days of "Save or die", because role playing by it's mature allows us to bend or break the rules. In fact it practically demands that we do.

The challenge in the old days was to avoid the instant death trap, but that mentality has evolved over time. Now the game is more tactical or more narrative, deconstructing the rpg back down to its war game roots, it morphing it into a more improv style of game where stakes are defined by those involved, often collectively. That is not to say there hasn't been a change in players, there has, and that some of them have a hard time dealing with failure, they do. But you know what? This has always been the case, from day one. It may be time to recognize the various life forms that exist within the greater role playing paradigm as a benefit to gaming, not a detriment. Toxicity does exist but it is easily avoided.

At the end of the day if you run good games, people will come to play them.