Why Peril Is Important for Your D&D Game: 💀 My High-Stakes Playstyle and Walking Dead Lesson 💀

Hey, looters, Flutes here

Today I want to talk briefly about something that came into my mind

It's about the threat of danger, the threat of character death, or even gore in Dungeons and Dragons

and whether it's important for a certain feel of game you're going for

Today on Flutes Loop. I've been a big fan of The Walking Dead in my day

My wife, Opel, and I used to watch it religiously. It's one of the few shows that we would watch

every time it came out. We didn't want to miss anything. We didn't want spoilers

Very few shows have ever done that for me. I had a bias towards zombie shows, but they always seemed so hokey and over the top to me

So when my dad recommended The Walking Dead to me, it was in season two during a marathon

where they were showing all the episodes to get up to the season finale coming up at the time

And I was hooked. I loved it. One reason I loved it that I didn't realize at the time

was the gore. And I don't love gore. And that's why I said I didn't realize it

I didn't know that I liked this part of it. But the gore and the threat of death

and like the real threat of death and it being very gruesome to watch for the characters you loved to die in the ways that they did made the story more compelling for me later on they actually backed off of gore a lot

in the show i don't know if you know this but they actually gave in to like censorship please to like

make the show less gory and they did so and fans as far as i can tell least the most vocal ones

did not like it i still watched the show but there was something missing where the threat of death

didn't seem as imminent and scary. And then they had moments where certain characters died in very gruesome ways

There's one very famous one. You probably know what I'm talking about that caused a lot of people to become disinterested

in the show because they love that character so much and they didn't like the way his death happened

So that's the other side of it is like you don't want to just willy-nilly kill characters, but at the same time it needs to happen

It's a fine line is what I'm getting it. So the reason I bring this up is because I'm realizing my play style in D&D

to enjoy the game depends on threat of failure and death. I really check out in my mind wanders if I think there's no real peril

or if the DM is just going to save us somehow There was even a point where I didn mind dying and I kind of a high high player so I kind of pushed the limits and the DM just kept letting me succeed

even though things didn't seem like they should be going my way based on the narrative and the

roles, that sort of thing. And that disappointed me, because it took the stakes out of the game for me

and after that it was hard for me to stay engaged. I questioned if my decisions really mattered

And there were other decisions you could make that are not based on, like, peril, right? So I still had fun, but the stakes weren't there as much

And I'm not talking about just even one DM. Like, I've kind of had this happen with multiple DMs where if I ever feel like they're going to save me with some safety net, it disengages me

I know not everyone is this way, just premising that way. I know I'm just talking about myself, but I'm looking to connect with other people who might feel this way

So like The Walking Dead, I want to know that my favorite character, which is my player character, could die and could die gruesomely

And then I suddenly rethink all my decisions. I want to survive. I enjoy that kind of game. So when the Walking Dead became less

gory and it felt less impactful and I was less into it It wasn just that the show went on for a long time It had many seasons and it wrapping up pretty soon here as I understand it D can feel the same way It very long kind of like a lot of seasons of a show If you don feel like the stakes are there it can become quite the drudgery at least for me I guess that really all I wanted to say but I really want to connect with other people who feel this way or people who feel this way or people who feel differently because I also want to round out my point of view to see who doesn feel this way and why because I don DM for people who are all like me That just the way it is I DM for pretty diverse interests honestly So let me know

Even Opal, my wife, has very different views from me, but we kind of felt the same about the Walking Dead

I don't know if she felt the same of, like, applying it to D&D. Go to the comment section. Let me know your thoughts on whether peril is important in your game or if you don't really care

If the gruesome ways your character can die is also important to you, or if just the peril itself is enough

you don't really care about gore or explicit descriptions. Let me know

I really want to discuss this with people, or at least hear different points of view. So have a great adventure this weekend

Hopefully your characters survive for another adventure, and I'll see you later. Bye