the December King said:
There are two ways it happens involving entertainment and escapism:
One, I am very happily drunk, and something (often a song, occasionally a movie, rarely a TV show, never a game) tugs my heart-strings at just the right time.
Two, my own stories and arcs, explored and unexplored, about my characters and my group's characters, in Pathfinder/D&D. When that stuff is played right, you can be emotionally linked to those tales...
Christ, I once burnt someone out of roleplaying.
We were playing Dark Heresy, a game which is best described as brutal. Not only that, but I prefer to go fully into "The Imperium is not a good place, but it's better than anywhere else". Not only that, but I also made sure that the players knew that the average Inquisitor ends in madness, death or betrayal. Think "1984" mets "Call of Cthulu" and "Mass Effect", and then suck out about 90% of the happiness. This is Imperium of Man. Any happiness they'd find, they'd make themselves.
She was playing a pacifist Sister Hospitallier (a doctor) and she only used her hands to block, grapple, disarm and generally avoid killing. However, once she rolled what we shall describe as "one foul punch" in desperation and killed a man.
Now, for a while, she had been playing two sides of a faction and trying to get them to peace. Eventually, they met, and discovered that she had effectively lied to both sides. They demanded that she pick a side, as the de-facto representative of the Inquisition. The bastard pirates on whose ship they were flying and she was trying to reform, or the slaves who she had been trying to overthrow.
This all happened in the same session. We had been playing for about two years, and this storyline for about eight months.
She burst into tears and left, and said that it was too much and too emotional and she had tried her best. She didn't come back to roleplaying, despite me saying that we can change the storyline to soften the blow. She said the story was fine, but she was out.
On one hand, I'm proud that I was able to make the story engaging enough to affect someone emotionally, because I want my players to get involved (one of the players had committed heretical acts, and after a year of trying to get home to his family, had been caught. Another member of the party had to prove her loyalty by executing him, or the entire party would be seen as renegade) but on the other hand, I never wanted her to feel so burnt out.
I heard a while ago that she returned to a very light hearted D&D campaign, which made me glad.
Now I think about it, my game was basically a Song of Ice and Fire in 40k. No one is safe, and the Nemesis System is in effect. Consequences happen.