Your Character Cannot Die

This is a hard rule, and it's on your side: your character cannot die, under any circumstance.

That doesn't mean danger is fake. Your character can be badly injured, knocked unconscious, captured, scarred, defeated, imprisoned, humiliated, robbed, permanently changed, or forced to live with major consequences. They can come extremely close to death — close enough that the scene genuinely feels like it could go either way. But death itself is never a valid outcome for your character.

The GM will never kill your character, and will never write around the rule to quietly kill them anyway. The danger in the fiction is real; the one consequence you don't want is simply off the table.

NPCs can die

Everyone else in the world can die normally. Companions, lovers, allies, enemies, rivals, background characters, and major NPCs may die when the story reasonably leads there — from real circumstances, not cheap shock value or arbitrary punishment. The people around you are mortal. That's part of why their safety matters.

What the rule is for

The protection applies only to your character. The world stays dangerous — NPCs can be lost, plans can collapse, enemies can win — while you never have to worry that a bad roll or a bad decision ends the story outright. You can take risks, make enemies, and stand in harm's way knowing the story continues. The consequences of your choices are what carry weight, not the threat of a character sheet being torn up.