In Roleplaying Games, Death Isn't Losing

People tend to associate death in RPGs with losing, which is only natural if one has ever played chess. Death in real life is also somewhat tragic. So I think it takes rising above our brute nature to look at it otherwise in games. Life is dangerous, less so perhaps in modern times, but death remains an ever-looming thing. I've come to look at death a little differently though, both in real life and in RPGs.

In games, death is funny to me. While playing World of Warcraft, I think it's just hilarious when my cleric is trudging through the ungainly terrain of Ferelas and falls off a cliff, plummeting to his temporary doom. The visual is just funny and I typically laugh when I die, the goofier the death, the more uproarious the laughter. Of course, the silly game takes the sting out of dying through the annoying time-stealing mechanism of a digital respawn.

I look at death the same way while playing the Pathfinder RPG. The sting of death in this, my favorite RPG, has been lessened in the rules, in this case, by extending the time it takes to die permanently (instead of -10 hit points its minus your Constitution score) and changing the odds of death. On the whole, the game is also just plain tilted in favor of the characters (and always has been, so this is not unique to Pathfinder).

Yet we still tend to equate dying with losing, instead of seeing it as first, a story to tell and  second, as an opportunity to try some new stuff with the game system. New supplementary material, whether from Paizo or from 3PPs, is coming out all the time and it's hard to explore those if all you ever play is the same human rogue you've been playing every two weeks for the last three years. Admittedly some of the the sting of dying for some as nothing to do with dying or losing and more to do with the effort of generating a new character or, even worse, writing a new character background. Early versions of "D&D" also encouraged a certain level of attachment to a character too, so that's also part of the sting.

However, the story you might gain from dying could be funny "derp" moment, or might be a no holes barred "glory days" tale you'd want to tell your friends over and over. We're really not just playing a game! We're making memories! If you look at it that way, then dying isn't so bad. I mean, where else can you die, laugh about it and start again. Certainly not in real life. Gandalf said it best a couple of times in Lord of the Rings:

Pippin: I never thought it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? This is not the end. Death is just another path, one that we all must take.

and...

Frodo: I wish the ring never came to me.
Gandalf: So do all who have carried its burden, but that is not for us to decide. All there is to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.

If you look at it that way with regard to RPGs, then dying becomes a lot more fun and a lot less "painful."

P.S. Okay if that doesn't illustrate my point maybe this will... Enjoy!