If you have an ability in a game that has a chance of eliminating you from the game if you use it, what does that then do to the game?
What does it do to the enjoyment of the other participants?
Older board games were very fond of player elimination – where you could stop playing the game when your position was overrun. And these could be LONG games. Consider Diplomacy, which could be an 8 hour game where players were progressively eliminated.
And that meant that a person might set aside their afternoon and evening for playing this game, but then WASN’T playing for hours.
When I started playing boardgames of European design about 15 years ago, one of the features that people raved about was that you were in the game until the end. You always could meaningfully participate.
This is not always true. Age of Steam feels like a Eurogame in many ways, but you can eliminate yourself in the first couple of turns. (There are reasons I prefer to play Steam!)
And so, player elimination has this weird thing of not only the person who was eliminated from the game feeling bad, but those continuing to play the game can feel bad. Because they have empathy and can see their friend not playing.
The longer the game, the more significant the issue. Being eliminated in a 5-minute game allows you to get back in soon (and likely enjoy the chaos before the game ends). Being eliminated in an 8-hour game? Urgh!
Of course, “you suck for 8 hours” can be just as bad. Yes, you are still in the game, but your position has been reduced to one you cannot win from. So, you should be careful about that as well.
TTRPGs handle character elimination in various ways. And, in general, there is a trend towards making it unlikely. If it does happen, then either (a) the character can be raised easily or (b) the player can quickly create a new character and join in again.
Some RPGs delight in making vulnerable PCs who die frequently. But I am pretty sure most of those get players back into the game quickly. But do their new positions suck?
I think it is very easy as an RPG GM to forget the consequences on a single player when their PC dies, and they must sit out for the rest of the session. This is partly because you are juggling so much already; you are not always paying attention to what an individual player does.
Getting better at handling those situations, so the player’s experience is good *despite* or even *because of* the PC’s death would be nice. (It is not, in my experience, easy).
I do want risk in my RPG play. I want consequences. I would like, occasionally, PCs to die. I would prefer it not feel arbitrary. But overall, I would like to handle it in a way that all the players enjoy the experience.
One of the interesting sidenotes here is that it also matters WHEN elimination happens during a session. If it occurs during the first moments of the game, then that is a long period of dead time.
If it happens during the closing moment, then less so!
The best moment of any game of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects was always discovering who was fed to the crocodiles! If that had happened half-way through the game, not so fun. But it was during final scoring!