What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[A Man In Black]

I don't even see what the big fucking deal is over people not being able to play. Dude, in D&D your party can sometimes split up and that means you won't be in every scene. That's just how the game works and I don't feel like it's a bad thing so long as it's not done for extended periods of time.

[...]

I have to assume nobody here has ever played monopoly, Risk or any number of other multiplayer board games, where people who lose get knocked out.

Splitting the party is #1 on the list of Rank Amateur GM Moves and I don't really see the need for a mechanic that inherently splits the party into "playing" and "waiting an extended period to get to do anything." Roleplaying is already a fairly niche hobby; no sense driving people away from it even more than usual by making the game even more hostile.

Or worse, more like Monopoly, which is absolutely fucking terrible.

[CapnTthePirateG]

And if the party splits up voluntarily (i.e. you guys go investigate the monk and we'll talk to the innkeeper) what the hell happens then? Someone is going to have to sit out

[fectin]

The folks supporting never killing PCs ("pro-lifers"?) are arguing from three distinct fallacies (ignoring the ad hominem and well-poisoning):

First: that anything which could happen, inevitably will happen, given enough time. That's simply not true. Even if you really did have infinite time, some series converge, and I have yet to see anyone who has done anything for infinite time.

Second: from the first, a false dilemma. Either kill characters constantly and viciously, or never at all.

Third: improper distribution of descriptors (an "illicit minor"). It's not very fun to fall to your death, but people still enjoy free-climbing overall. Character death may not be fun, but that fails to demonstrate anything about whether games that include character death are unfun. Personally, I hate losing Twilight Imperium, but would never play if I couldn't lose.

First off, character death (if at all possible) inevitably will happen in games, because there is essentially an infinite amount of any even moderately successful RPG. It won't necessarily happen in this game or even all the games played by Bob, but it will happen in some game and it will suck for that game for various reasons. If possible and practical, it's a good idea to change things so that game sucks less. It's also not a fact in evidence that all games have a trivial chance of character death when pretty much all of the crunch-heavy RPGs played by TGD regulars don't.

Second, it doesn't matter if characters die constantly or infrequently, it still sucks. In fact, if it happens rarely, it sucks even more when it happens, because there's more of a feeling of being picked on, singled out, and/or excluded. Being ejected from a game in baseball is more of a big deal to people than being ejected in hockey or basketball.

Third, a game can certainly be fun despite character death, but that is in spite of, not because of. If we could eliminate death and injury in climbing, we totally would, and freeclimbing would still appeal to people who enjoy higher-risk climbs because failure would mean that you lose more progress. Nobody's advocating that all things that people hate be eliminated, nor that all setbacks be eliminated, but that setbacks that mean a player sits in the penalty box for a session or three be eliminated.

First, your basic argument is wrong. Possibilities are not all inevitabilities (example: each session a party has a 1/(16*level^2) chance of losing a player. How many sessions before there is a 90% chance of having lost one?) Then you fall back on the third fallacy (it is less fun in an immediate sense, therefor the game must be less fun overall), and make an arguement which is equivalent to "losing checkers sucks. If possible and practical, it's a good idea to change things so that game sucks less." (I know that's a ridiculous oversimplification because of complexity and investment in each game, but if you can't defend the principle, you can't defend the application).

Your second point doesn't seem to answer mine, unless you're saying that suckiness is somehow conserved. You do raise an interesting point here, but it says that there may be an optimum death rate.

Third, I disagree. Tritely, cheating death is fun, and you can't cheat death if there is no death. Removing that source of unfun inherently removes that source of fun. You could try to make an arguement that there is no mix which is a net positive, but "character death is unfun when it happens" by itself doesn't say anything about it's effects overall.

[Swordslinger]

Splitting the party is #1 on the list of Rank Amateur GM Moves and I don't really see the need for a mechanic that inherently splits the party into "playing" and "waiting an extended period to get to do anything."

Splitting the party is sometimes necessary for a good story. You don't split them on an extended basis, but the idea that every scene must involve every PC is generally pretty awful if you intend to do anything but beer and pretzels dungeon crawls.

Or worse, more like Monopoly, which is absolutely fucking terrible.

Seems to be a pretty popular board game to me.

Dude, I can understand the opinion of the people that don't want to die, who want this cakewalk game that you're basically playing with cheat codes. But it's pretty insulting for them to try to play it off like their playing the one and true D&D and everyone else can't possibly be having fun.

That's shortsighted and ignorant. I realize you hate character death and Monopoly, but you are in the fucking minority.

Not everyone needs to play with immortality cheat codes turned on to have fun. Sorry bro.

[DSMatticus]

not being able to play

I get in about 4-6 hours of RPG'ing a week. Less right now, because somebody had a baby and some other shit and my group basically blew up. Getting knocked out of a session may literally mean "spent more time preparing for the session than I did playing." That is not a fun outcome. That is not a satisfying outcome. It's me not playing the game.

The number of hobbies that operate this way is very low, and the trend is away from that kind of shit because it's the age of videogames and it's hard to justify playing a game where you do nothing for an extended period of time when there are abundant sources of entertainment available where you don't do that shitty sort of thing.

monopoly, Risk or any number of other multiplayer board games

Those games are boring and long as shit and primarily: they are adversarial. D&D is not adversarial. There is no player there against whom you are competing.

this cakewalk game that you're basically playing with cheat codes

If you're going to persist in equating "no death" with "no failure" shut the fuck up. Here is a game with no 'death,' but it has failure. Let me know how many lines you clear. Then you can tell me whether or not death has anything at all to do with difficulty.

Now stop conflating death and failure, you witless fuck.

[Stubbazubba]

Dude, I can understand the opinion of the people that don't want to die, who want this cakewalk game that you're basically playing with cheat codes.

No death =/= no failure. That seems to be a persistent misconception that has been addressed enough times that it's no longer acceptable to use it as a strawman. For an example, see Monopoly, apparently a pretty popular board game. You never die. You get captured and go to jail, and then you strive to get out because while in jail your ability to play is severely limited. Eventually, you get out and play again. The funny thing is this exact thing has been advocated here as an alternative failure scenario in D&D, one of many. So, really, stop using this strawman, it's not getting anyone anywhere.

[RadiantPhoenix]

You get captured and go to jail, and then you strive to get out because while in jail your ability to play is severely limited..

No, no you don't, because when you're in jail you don't have to pay rent.[/nitpick]

[Swordslinger]

I get in about 4-6 hours of RPG'ing a week. Less right now, because somebody had a baby and some other shit and my group basically blew up. Getting knocked out of a session may literally mean "spent more time preparing for the session than I did playing." That is not a fun outcome. That is not a satisfying outcome. It's me not playing the game.

I have to believe you're really throwing out a ton of hyperbole here. How much preparation does a PC really have to do? Seriously dude. I can understand here that a DM would be upset if his carefully laid preparation got shredded, because that's a ton of work. Yet ironically, doing that to the DM is something that people here seem totally okay with.

As far as sitting out, you're probably not going to die in the beginning, which are the easy fights, and more likely to die during a boss fight. That means your time sitting out is minimized. If you're worried about dying off early, either you've got a killer DM or you just suck at D&D.

And whatever, maybe you miss an hour or two of the game because you drop. Boo fucking hoo, that's part of the game. You do realize that if your character was knocked out, the same might be true, right? The only difference is you wouldn't be making a new character for next session. But whatever, you'd still be sitting out.

Speaking of which, instead of sitting around doing nothing when you die, why not just start work on your new character? It'll give you something to do.

The number of hobbies that operate this way is very low, and the trend is away from that kind of shit because it's the age of videogames and it's hard to justify playing a game where you do nothing for an extended period of time when there are abundant sources of entertainment available where you don't do that shitty sort of thing.

That's because the majority of stuff you're talking about are single player. Yes obviously if you die in Oblivion, you just reload. The reason that is is because nobody else is playing. You are the only main character and thus when you die, you're not waiting on anyone else to complete their story.

If you were playing a single character campaign in D&D, you wouldn't be waiting either. But this is a group game, and the rest of the group has shit to do and most of the group doesn't wants the entire game to end like in gears of war coop mode just because someone died.

Plenty of multiplayer video games force you to wait till the next round starts before you can respawn, or they have a respawn delay at least. Forcing people to wait before they can rejoin the game is not some new and novel idea.

I seriously wonder if you've played many multiplayer games. I'm hearing a very selfish attitude and the sort of desire to play a game with invulnerability cheats on. If so, maybe you should just stick to single player games. There, the game exists just to cater to you and you alone. You don't have to worry about making your friends happy.

If you're going to persist in equating "no death" with "no failure" shut the fuck up. Here is a game with no 'death,' but it has failure. Let me know how many lines you clear. Then you can tell me whether or not death has anything at all to do with difficulty.

Now stop conflating death and failure, you witless fuck.

What the fuck? You can still get a game over, which is the equivalent of dying, so I have no clue what point you're trying to make. Anytime you have to start form the beginning, you've effectively "died". By your flawed logic, you don't die in D&D either, because the player himself is still alive to make a new character. So it's just a "failure" of that character. See, I can play pointless semantic wordgames too.

Way to miss the entire point of the discussion. But I guess you had to get in the mandatory insult to make your point sound better, because there's really not substances there. But hey, if you yell loud enough... Why not try allcaps next time.

[Red_Rob]

I get in about 4-6 hours of RPG'ing a week. Less right now, because somebody had a baby and some other shit and my group basically blew up. Getting knocked out of a session may literally mean "spent more time preparing for the session than I did playing." That is not a fun outcome. That is not a satisfying outcome. It's me not playing the game.

Sometimes in an RPG you don't get to do much. Maybe the party split up for some perfectly defensible reason and you got half the screen time you usually do. Maybe the Rock/Paper/Scissors combat system came up with enemies you can't do much against this session. Maybe you fucked up and got captured, and the party took a while to rescue you. Whatever the reason sometimes it happens, and most people accept this as a necessary evil of a cooperative game. Do people cry and moan when they get benched in football? No, because it makes the game overall more fun.
And really, how fucking much do you people die? In our last two campaigns we have had exactly 1 character die permanently. We have however had numerous situations where people have dropped to negative hp, or been cornered by some powerful monster, and the excitement factor has been greatly increased by the fact that death was always on the table.

If you're going to persist in equating "no death" with "no failure" shut the fuck up. Here is a game with no 'death,' but it has failure. Let me know how many lines you clear. Then you can tell me whether or not death has anything at all to do with difficulty.

What the actual fuck? When you reach the top point in tetris, the game ends. The game is fucking over and there is nothing more than you can do except start a fresh game. That is an almost perfect analogy for what happens when a PC dies in D&D, and is exactly what the anti-death crowd have been railing against.

Now, people have suggested a number of possible failure results other than death, such as being captured, or robbed, or whatever (as if these are not also available in a game where characters can die ), however one of the useful things about PC death is that it is specific to that PC. This means that you can have the group win whilst having the player lose. And that means that every die roll is exciting, as even if you have the fight under control that Orc could still crit with his next strike and take you down.

Now stop conflating death and failure, you witless fuck.

If you lose the fight and get captured, then spend 3 hours waiting to escape, how is that any different from rolling a new character and waiting 3 hours to get introduced? Or is the proposal now that the party is never allowed to separate, everything always happens together and everyone always gets equal opportunity to act at all times?

[tzor]

Splitting the party is #1 on the list of Rank Amateur GM Moves ...

I'd argue the opposite; splitting the party is one of the most advanced moves a DM can make (and the reason why it sucks is that it is too advanced for most DM's to handle). First, you need a party that is big enough to split up. Second, you need a location that can easily spearate groups into sub-groups. Finally, you need to have a DM that has already established one or more ADMs that can handle the sub-group assigned to them parallel with the sub-group under the DM's control.

It ain't easy. Done right it is a great thing. I would not reccomend it for combat oriented games, but mystery / intrigue games can use this to a great effect.

P.S. I could be wrong but IIRC the best example I saw of this was at a local convention and the DM/ADM were husband/wife.

[DSMatticus]

That's because the majority of stuff you're talking about are single player.

The multiplayer versions of: Halo, Battlefield, Team Fortress, Call of Duty, Doom, Quake. Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires (yes, they're adversarial and it's failure state 1 because you just find a new game). Diablo, Titan's Quest, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale.

Plenty of multiplayer video games force you to wait till the next round starts before you can respawn, or they have a respawn delay at least. Forcing people to wait before they can rejoin the game is not some new and novel idea.

Compare: <15 seconds, 2 minutes, and an hour. Find me a shooter with a respawn time greater than 15 minutes.

What the fuck? You can still get a game over, which is the equivalent of dying

Holy fuck you are being retarded. I am going to spell this out for you as simply as I can:
1) There are failure states which allow you to continue playing (dying in Doom, losing in Tetris, losing in Hatetris, failing a campaign objective in D&D).
2) There are failure states which force you to stop playing (losing in Risk, losing in Monopoly, dying in an encounter in D&D).

Now here's how the actual argument is going:
Me: "Failure states like 2 suck, because they force people to stop playing. Death in D&D is such a failure state."
You: "But without death in D&D, it would be easy mode. It's like playing videogames with god mode."
Me: "Videogames don't have failure states like 2, videogames have failure states like 1. Here is such a videogame, hatetris: was that easy mode? No? Then your argument that difficulty needs D&D death like in failure state 2 is wrong, because there are difficult games that use failure state 1."

You don't need failure states like 2 to get difficulty. You are getting confused by the fact that "death" in D&D and "death" in a videogame are completely different things. And you also don't seem to understand that a game might have objectives other than "survive." Doom doesn't have the objective "survive." If it did, you would stand in the starting room for as long as you felt like because no monsters would randomly spawn to come eat you and you could survive as long as you wanted. It has the objective, "reach the end of this linear, monster-filled path," and so you subject yourself to monsters in an attempt to do that and then those monsters occasionally put you in the fail state. And D&D doesn't have the objective "survive" either, it has the objective, "fulfill whatever goals your character and the party have," and you can fail those goals easily. Running for your life from the battle with the dragon means the princess gets eaten; that is a failure state of type 1. Not type 2.

The game is fucking over and there is nothing more than you can do except start a fresh game.

It's like you aren't even reading. Starting a fresh game in Tetris takes seconds, which is the entire point. Losing in Tetris means you get to keep playing, and is therefore totally unlike death in D&D.

That is an almost perfect analogy for what happens when a PC dies in D&D, and is exactly what the anti-death crowd have been railing against.

You don't actually understand what the anti-death crowd have been railing against.

If you lose the fight and get captured, then spend 3 hours waiting to escape, how is that any different from rolling a new character and waiting 3 hours to get introduced?

It isn't, both of those failure states would suck.

[Stubbazubba]

If you lose the fight and get captured, then spend 3 hours waiting to escape, how is that any different from rolling a new character and waiting 3 hours to get introduced?

When you get captured you spend that three hours gathering intelligence on your captors, maybe learning that an item of great value is or a VIP is being moved from point A to point B, etc., from over-hearing the guards. Maybe you make friends with a fellow prisoner who also escapes with you and becomes a valuable ally later. Maybe the fellow prisoner becomes a good friend but then dramatically dies in order to give you the chance you need to escape (think of Dr. Yinsen from Iron Man), but hands you the key to his greatest creation in the Sydekwest Kingdom, whatever. It's chock full of opportunities for character development (since if characters never fail without dying, they rarely get a chance to reflect), and for the use of non-combat abilities. Plot-relevant things can happen, a whole adventure can be had without even rolling very many dice, just in the downtime between battles for the other group (assuming there is one). Being captured only determines how the story continues, not if it continues. That's the difference. There's more to the game than winning combats, after all.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If a number of PCs greater than zero and less than all of them are captured, the party has been split. If this is a thing that can happen (which should probably be the case, even if it's unlikely), then the game needs to be able to handle this scenario well. Thus, "out of play," abilities.

Here are some examples from Magic, which we might take inspiration from:

• "While I am dead, I can shield my friends from harm"
• "I can kill people while I'm dead"
• "I can send allies to the party ahead of me"
• "I can buff people before I arrive"

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't mind playing games where it's literally impossible to die; stories can recover from stupid contrivances and become interesting again as long as you gloss over the Deus Ex Machina, but if you die you die.

That said, I am a fan occasionally of heroes dying an ignoble death as long as it looked like it was otherwise avoidable. Being railroaded into death or failure makes me angry but stumbling into it does not. Even if it leads to an 'oops, let's call it a night and play Smash Bros. for the next two hours' outcome. There's always the regret and for want of a nail factor. To me, sometimes it makes a good story that your party of plucky, multi-national heroes die watching the Necromancer King sacrifice the princess while knowing that since they failed it would plunge the kingdom into a thousand years of darkness. Bad endings like that now and then help recharge the WSoD batteries and make victory seem sweeter. It's an integration of gameplay and story I like.

That said, I'm also aware that a lot of people don't care for bad endings and are especially hateful at anticlimatic bad endings. I like a good bad ending now and then but I could live without them. I'm also especially aware that in order to really properly pack the punch sometimes the DM has to declare 'okay, roll up new characters' or 'let's call it a night even though it's two hours early' or 'okay, meanwhile in an alternate universe...'.

I don't mind having to do it, I've done it before and I actually enjoy the frustration and arbitrariness of what happened in retrospect (as long as it doesn't happen too often) but the gameplay and metagame considerations I certainly don't expect or demand that games need to cater to me. It's just a weird thing that I like and appreciate as a now and then thing.

[K]

If you lose the fight and get captured, then spend 3 hours waiting to escape, how is that any different from rolling a new character and waiting 3 hours to get introduced?

It' different because you lose the character and all the story that the character has a part of it. Everything "RP" about the "RPG" is now over and you have to start over with a character that's not in the campaign and doesn't have a shared story with the party.

I mean, if you are playing some military multi-player game, who cares if you die? There's no advancement, no plot, no NPCs that had relationships to the character, no narrative.... your character is a tabula rasa each time he spawns with a gun because there is literally nothing for him to interact with except the combat.

That's not an RPG. I mean, even an MMO player would get pissed if every time he died he made a new character because he'd lose his rare drops, his money, his advancement in quest lines and areas he'd opened up, his house that he'd decorated with furniture, and all the other RP elements of an MMO.

[K]

As an aside, I can say that as a DM I've never killed a player because I always knew it was super easy. The vast majority of DnD players are terrible at tactics and killing a player every other combat would be a certainty if I actually tried to do it (and it's not like creating an in-character reason to do it would not be a trivial task too).

It's actually easier with published adventures because the monster's offenses and defenses won't stand a chance of being complementary to PC offenses and defenses. That, and because most module writers are so afraid of making an easy adventure that they overcompensate and make monsters on the hard side.

[echoVanguard]

Bad endings like that now and then help recharge the WSoD batteries and make victory seem sweeter. It's an integration of gameplay and story I like.

...I certainly don't expect or demand that games need to cater to me.

This is really the core of the issue here. There have been a lot of arguments thrown around about how RPGs are subjective, but they really don't have any logical bearing on the question (and all of the arguments have been pretty poor, anyway).

It's easy to fall into the trap of saying "X is good, and Y is bad, therefore the system should do more of X and eliminate Y", but it's virtually always poor logic - if you are thorough in your analysis, you find out that X is sometimes good, and Y is sometimes bad, but that there are mitigating factors for both and unforeseen consequences to what you're trying to do. People are attempting to make the argument that character death is un-fun (usually without really exploring all of the ramifications of the statement), but the fact remains that it's a poor argument, especially since fun is highly subjective. Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

1. Players enjoy getting magic items.
2. Players don't enjoy losing magic items.
3. Therefore, players should receive a new magic item every session, and all magic items should be invulnerable to harm or loss.

or even:

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

These logical constructs are clearly silly, but they use the same line of argument that several people have advanced in this thread (and others). The inescapable truth is that the real issue is more complex than can be summed up in a single statement, and a robust RPG system needs to be capable of supporting all valid outcomes. Players should be able to die, and be able to not die; players should be able to receive rewards (such as magic items), and be able to not receive rewards; players should be able to succeed and be able to fail; and the game should be capable of handling all of these cases in a fairly straightforward and easy-to-understand manner.

While the goal of "maximizing fun" seems like a no-brainer at first, sufficient analysis always determines that what the real goal should be is "optimizing fun". In other words, increasing the amount of fun had by all without reducing the amount of fun had by others. Whenever this point has been brought up in this thread, the counter-argument has consistently been "you're having fun wrong", which is sufficiently incorrect to be utterly unworthy of consideration.

echo

[Chamomile]

players should be able to receive rewards (such as magic items), and be able to not receive rewards;

Also, let's please not have three threads on magic items.

[K]

1. Players enjoy getting magic items.
2. Players don't enjoy losing magic items.
3. Therefore, players should receive a new magic item every session, and all magic items should be invulnerable to harm or loss.

or even:

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

Those are not logical conclusions from the stated premises. In fact, they are just really transparent strawmen just like everything else you've said.

Please stop trying to use logic. Watching you fail at it is intellectually painful.

[Chamomile]

Those are not logical conclusions from the stated premises

...Yes, K. That is the point.

[K]

Those are not logical conclusions from the stated premises

...Yes, K. That is the point.

The point is that he strawman's every argument he sees with faux logic?

I mean, if he thinks that those are people's actual arguments then he's demonstrably wrong. No one is that extreme on either position, and that's what makes them strawman arguments.

[Chamomile]

Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

This bit, which immediately precedes the bit you quoted, very heavily implies that echo does not believe either of the positions you quoted were valid or thought to be valid by anyone in the thread, since he is using them as examples of things which will presumably be held as universally false. Hence, the point of the given conclusions is that they are illogical.

[tussock]

There are no rails. There's a hook (treasure, bounty, player request), with abundant clues to chase (and random scenery the players turn into clues of their own making), often a BBEG the players will wish to cut up; but I make plans for the monsters, not for the players. It's not a set of rooms for the players to raid, it's a home for a tribe of marauding, Evil humanoids, who are expecting some vengeance to come calling eventually.

See hooks, clues, prepared encounters and whatnot are rails. The DM plans out how he expects the players to respond and prepares encounters and environments for them to access and engage with. Perhaps they don't do it as you expect and you have to improvise to keep the story going. That improve might be coming up with something entirely different because they have come up with an entirely different way to engage your prepared material. Perhaps its that they've made a decision that would likely result in their untimely demise and so you need to figure out how to keep the story going in a believable way. You have created the situation that the story will play out in and it is your job to make sure the story can continue.

No! You can do that all you like. I try my best to meta-not-expect the players, these particular characters, just as the monsters typically cannot expect the PCs. Hell, that's part of random encounters and one-check secret passages, so I can't know what the players will face, nor in what order. The monsters often stay lost in a fog of war as the PCs crash through their homes, grab the loot, and leave before any coordinated response can be fielded.

There is no story other than what the players do, and a story of their deaths will no doubt be a fine one (as it has been enough times for me to know): but D&D players are amazingly feisty bastards when they get their backs to the wall in a game where they know a TPK is allowed at any time.

The players can't change anything. There are no "take it backs" in RPGs.* If they do something that looks like it will lead to their demise, than you have to figure out how the story can continue. If you as a DM can't figure out how to convincingly keep the story going, be it do to them making a choice you hadn't anticipated or them making a choice which has led them to their doom, than you shouldn't be a DM.

Fuck you very much. If the player's choices can't result in their death other than in specially designated fights: man up and take the death mechanic out of the game for PCs. BE HONEST WITH YOUR PLAYERS. It's called respect. My game has the death mechanic mostly intact, and uses it.

*well I do believe the DM needs to warn when they are about to try something guaranteed to fail. If a player says he's going to try to jump a lava river that is wider than he can possibly jump because he didn't bother to ask how far it was, I will let him reconsider with full information.

"It's far too wide." Don't get into being subtle with the world.

It'll be super-hard if you wander in at level 2, and super-easy if you wait 'till level 10, because updating it much is boring, anti-sim, and thwarts the player's accomplishments anyway.

First of all letting players take on an adventure you know they have small to no chance to handle is a pretty dick move on the part of the DM.

Living in levelappropriatencounterland isn't for all of us, eh. If the location seems hard, it's hard. If the location seems easy, it's easy. If you had to run for your life in the first encounter, keep running! Also, get better intelligence for the next run, Divination spells are awesome. If there's a big-ass dragon flies overhead, don't go chasing it, that's stupid. Don't fuck with high level spell casters, because they can very easily kill you all. Simple stuff, pay attention, consider your plans.

Hell, ask me! I don't keep secrets, players just prefer not to know.

Secondly, updating is not anti-sim

For me it is. Far too big of a world for me to keep it all running, so I leave it all alone instead. Black box until the players crack it open and set it running, then it'll progress.

There is no fudging. Players hate it, and I will not do that to them. As DM it is my job to present reasonable collections and alliances of monsters (and treasures) in reasonably foreshadowed places, prepared as if living their lives, have them coordinate a response and fight back and as well as they might manage, within the limits of their information and community morale.

See DMs are actually fudging all the time. We do it by making tactical choices which will give the players a fighting chance.

You fudge constantly to get your bullshit story to unfold, I run a game of D&D. The players play their PCs to win, I play the monsters to win, or to run, or bargain, as the case may be. Sure, some monsters are stupid animals with very limited tactics, but they're still doing their best within those limits.

Anyhoo, I'm just one guy running scores, I make plenty of tactical errors at the best of times without deliberately adding any.

We don't make them fight the who village in a single go. We don't have all the archers turn the mage into a pin-cushion and leave the poor fighter for last. In the rocket-launcher-tag world of 3e, every time your not TPKing the party during any challenging encounter, you are probably holding back the full potential you could unleash on the players.

You coddle your players. I have the villages and encampments try to organise, but the players always run. I have archers try to take out spellcasters, but the players are too proactive and smart for that shit. Players avoid high level opponents as best they can, and try to have overwhelming force on their own side of any fight, but they don't always get that right. No one deliberately fights higher level spellcasters, and monsters tend to make for the sunset once they see how powerful the PC casters are. Morale rules, FTW.

And why do you do that? Because you want them to be able to win and continue the story.

No! They want to be able to go questing, I want to present a world for them to take on, and the game has ample spells, skills, and themes for them to figure out where the easy quests are to be found, and more importantly, where the ones are that they won't find too easy, to optimise rewards vs game time. Not that they always get that right, or play well when they do.

I have some house rules to soften the rocket-tag in 3e, make easier fights matter more so the players can still enjoy them, make surrender functional within civilised circles so the world can make more sense. What's left is still harsh if anyone gets it wrong and is all strictly applied. PCs do die, usually to harder things, but sometimes to crap like a small room full of Goblins.


TL;DR: some of us really are simulationists. The game world doesn't really care that much about the PCs, even if we allow they won't be randomly telefragged in their sleep, for the sake of not being a dick.

[DSMatticus]

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

Success vs failure is a strawman because you can have failure without player exclusion (see every videogame in existence). Either you do not actually understand the positions you are arguing with, since you keep claiming that we think failure is bad (despite numerous corrections), or you are intentionally trying to misrepresent the position as some sort of player-coddling and you are a strawmanning asshole.

Nobody here has argued that the game shouldn't have failure states. What has been argued is that failure states should not result in exclusion from the game if it is not otherwise necessary. K has a slightly stronger position about it than I do, in that he thinks not being able to tell stories about a particular character anymore is bad and I don't give a shit; I just care that everyone who shows up to play the game should actually spend that time playing, and mechanics which interfere with that are bad.

And none of anyone's arguments are that "the game should be composed entirely of nothing but enjoyable experiences." As a matter of fact, a game that is nothing but constant positive reinforcement turns out to be boring as shit and people will stop playing fast. The only actual argument that's been made is that whether players are failing or succeeding, they should be playing rather than not-playing, and mechanics should align with this goal. Enjoyment has not been the issue. Failure has not been the issue. These statements are just a shit ton of straw in a vaguely humanoid shape. Stop it.

If you want to actually disagree with us (well, me; I can't say quite as much about K's position, but this was my impression), the argument you have to make is that "mechanics which exclude players from the game contribute to the experience," and there are actually fairly compelling arguments you could make there, and I would disagree with their necessity and we could get into that. But this shit about "oh boo-hoo, players fail; get over it" is getting to be super-obnoxious because it's got fuck-all to do with the topic and isn't a refutation of anything anyone has said here.

[Orion]

Tussock: If you have ever had your PCs "running for their lives" in a 3.X game, I strongly suspect that you were in fact coddling them. Successfully getting away from more powerful enemies after they've had a chance to demonstrate their superior power is almost impossible in Third.