Psychologists tell us that we fear losing what we already have far more than not gaining what we want. I have experienced quite a bit of loss in my life, and they still leave marks now. It’s not something that you recover from completely: loss of a career, of a loved one, a time in your life, of a really great bass guitar, a pet. We remember all of them.

The RPG Broken Rooms by Stephen Herron from Greymalkin Games formalizes loss as an essential part of character creation, almost before everything else, certainly not as an afterthought. You determine some profound loss that the character has had in their life. Having spoken with the author, he confirmed that there is a secret within the game itself that runs completely on loss. Now, that’s a very interesting and compelling idea.

Come to think of it, I’ve had characters lose quite a few things over the past few years:

Body parts, jobs, reputations, relationships, the whole nine yards. It’s always interesting to see what the characters end up doing when they are faced with that trauma.Come to think of it, there is another game that formalizes loss. Delta Green uses a system where the anchors or bonds in your life systematically dissolve as the agents dedicate almost all of their lives and energy towards their missions. It’s not that they just spend too much time there. It’s that they are changed, and the world that they go back to no longer fits. That’s another very visceral experience, and I can relate to that one as well.

I think the best RPG sessions have our characters experiencing real human events and emotions. To me, it makes them seem much more real, even if it is painful.