Is this question within the guidelines?

Question

Is the following question within guidelines? If not, what are some suggestions for how I might modify it to be within guidelines?

How does PC access to life-restoration magic affect a westmarchian campaign?

One of the hallmarks of a westmarchian game is danger, with a high likelihood of character death.

From Grand Experiments: West Marches:

The environment is dangerous. Very dangerous. That’s intentional, because [...] danger unites. PCs have to work together or they are going to get creamed. They also have to think and pick their battles — since they can go anywhere, there is nothing stopping them from strolling into areas that will wipe them out. If they just strap on their swords and charge everything they see they are going to be rolling up new characters. Players learn to observe their environment and adapt — when they find owlbear tracks in the woods they give the area a wide berth (at least until they gain a few levels). When they stumble into the lair of a terrifying hydra they retreat and round up a huge posse to hunt it down.

This implies that life-restoration magic is hard to come by.

However, it's not unreasonable that back in town Clarice the Cleric is willing to cast raise dead for a price ("Get yer raisies here! 500 gp, plus 10% tithe for the faithful, 25% for the rest of you faithless damned heathens!"). Even 625gp doesn't seem a crazy amount for even a low-level party to pony up to save a valued comrade.

My question is this, how has access or lack of access to life-restoration magic in a west-marchian game that you have DMed or played in affected the game?

dungeons-and-dragons gm-techniques

Answer 1

It’s fine except for the meat of the question at the end, and would have to be changed to stay open. Why is subtle but important. Fortunately the subtlety means it’s easy to fix.

Asking how it has affected individual GMs’ games means that every answer is equally correct — because any answer that describes how it affected their game is correct that it affected their game that way. That’s a poll, and would be closed.

To fix this, ask a question of universal fact rather than a poll of individual experiences.

Answers are already expected to be supported by factual such as experience, so you don’t need to ask for experiences and risk accidentally undermining the question with wording that makes it a poll question. Instead, ask how it does affect a West Marches game, so that answers can all compete to best correctly state how it does affect it. Let the answers worry about how they support their positions.

So I would change it to:

My question is this, how does access or lack of access to life-restoration magic in a west-marchian game affect the game?

(The tags are inaccurate too, but that won’t affect close votes — they’d just get edited. It’s not about any edition of D&D, nor is it about any particular GM technique. For that question, accurate tags would be sandbox resurrection.)

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Aside, the easiest way to ascertain the Stackability of a question is just to post it on the main site. There are myriad systems available there to produce the same outcome, but more eyes to get it sorted quickly, and no need to post twice before it’s live in a Stackable form. Assuming one is patient and not afraid of a possible temporary hold, it’s designed to do this job.