Death as the teaching tool in TTRPGs

In a board game you have little emotional attachment to your monopoly shoe-character, so the only fail state is losing, which really only means you stop playing for now.

A TTRPG is more complex than a boardgame, of course, but many of them are little more than combat and adventure simulators. In those games, death is the only consequence of importance. If you fail at the only thing you're doing in the game that means you've died.

However, as you play longer and grow attached to the fictional world, your PC gains additional things to lose. No one likely cares if their level one fighter dies in the first d&d session. And maybe they don't care if their level 14 wizard dies six months in if they've just gone from dungeon the dungeon collecting treasure. But give them a family, have them build ties to the NPCs and community around them, and death ceases to become the worst thing that could happen.

This leads to non-tactical games. If the focus of the games is on relationships and personal drama, death has no place on the table, as it is a short circuit of the true drama. It's the boring way out.

*scratches cheek*
After playing in 7th Sea one shots and a campaigns even some short games on Gamer's Plane death is a real things in certain situations and to me it makes sense, but they're not the worse. Drowning at sea, gun shots after a while will kill you they only do dramatic wounds and you don't have a lot of those, fight to the death with a villian? Well if you don't die and he does, you mark corruption, the more non heroish things you do (killing people that have surrendered) as a continuation has a cost, you can see it on the sheet, when you're hit the threshold you turn in your PC, the GM now runs him as a villian with their own agenda.

That said there's the flip side the unknown happens but if you purposely grab a tiger's tail it's going to hurt. I get the idea no one like's a GM who does wandering damage but if you do a series of foolish things... You should be surprised that things sometimes don't always pan out just fine for the hero or heroes. *shrugs*

I can understand people expecting character death as an adventurer's career is meant to be risky, otherwise every farmer would hang up their pitchfork and go adventuring instead... Though, it seems death is the only risk games give any attention to. Every combat encounter, every trap, every environmental hazard is one way for a PC to die. There are rules which pertains to characters dying, and eventually being brought back to life. Maiming? Loosing limbs? Not so much... Well, I guess there's also curses...

I am a huge fan of games that include tables for permanent injuries. Yeah, it might suck being stuck with a pegleg or having no depth perception for the rest of the campaign because you lost an eye, but it presents an interesting challenge and a lot of roleplay potential.

I bring up the podcast Sounds Like Crowes a lot (because it is soooo good), but it highlights how well Savage Worlds handles injuries and emotional trauma. By the end of the campaign, those characters carried the weight of their journey with them mentally and phsyically. The 5e DMG has a Lingering Injuries table. I wish it were used more often. I think it adds a lot to the game.

Me as well. It's why I like games like The Black Hack, Into the Odd, and a whole bunch of Free League games with crit tables. Grist for the RPG mill...

I'm in the same boat with Griff and Harrigan. It's probably in the way we learned how to play but maybe that's just a coincidence. When I started playing Death was always on the line, as the Sicilian said. The group I played with alternated meat-grinder dungeons with urban and wilderness adventures that weren't so tough. We, as a group of players, always knew that the characters we nurtured up to be high enough level to attempt a dungeon might not survive. It sucked when our characters died but that was just the price of admission to those games. That sort of gameplay style stuck with me ever since and I tend to gravitate towards games that reflect that. Maybe it's just an attempt to recapture the 'glory days' of my gaming past but it shapes the way I play and run any roleplaying system I get involved with. Games where death is a remote and nearly impossible result I tend to shy away from playing.
TTRPGs have moved way beyond the meat-grinder stage of play and I feel that's definitely for the better. I don't really wish to return to those days but that era informs my preference of gameplay and the types of games I enjoy playing and running. When I run D&D it's usually a low-level campaign or I use the E6 variant rules. In other games I tend to run them grittier than the standard setting; Shadowrun especially, but that includes most other games including Star Trek...
There's no right or wrong way to run or play or even design games as long as everyone is on the same page and is having fun.

I've had it in a DnD game I run on here and it got to the point of one of the characters being down making death saves. I quickly paused the game to check in how the players wanted things to be handled, did they want there to be a risk of their characters dying or not. The decision was made and we moved on with everyone being happy where we stood on the matter (that character did end up dying but that is now a plot point motivating at least one of the other characters).

On the flip side of this is the Alien campaign I'm running at the moment where I put it front and centre that characters will most likely die and the players should be ok with that. Again, the players confirmed they were ok with it and we moved on with the game.

For me it's definitely something that needs to be discussed and definitely has a place in some games. The PC's should know and appreciate that their actions will have consequences up to and (if it fits the tone of the game) including death. In games like DnD after a certain point death is an inconvenience at best but in others like WFRP or Alien it's a serious consideration that ANY time you get into combat one or more of the party could not be walking away from it.