There was a D&D game that we played in my dorm room at Emerson in 1989 that we never finished. About a year later I started up a new game with one of the same players, and he asked if he could keep the treasure and experience he’d gained in that last session, despite the fact that I was scrapping the old storyline and starting a brand new campaign. I agreed to let him keep the good stuff from the old game… but he had to take the bad, as well. That meant that his character, a paladin, would have a failed quest to his name. From that point on, the stigma of failure, survivor’s guilt, and loss of faith were part of our hero’s core stats and it gave an emotional richness to the stories we played, as well as ample motivation. I talked about that game and more with my old friend, Eric Lemay on his podcast, “Level E.”
Below is the link to that podcast.
https://levele.libsyn.com/website/john-crye-and-his-new-fantasy-novel-the-elect-stories
