Not objectively inferior, but objectively less dangerous. And, because it is known to be objectively less dangerous, less easy to suspend disbelief about the dangers involved.
This is the bit I don't get. Less dangerous to whom? Not less dangerous to the player, who is (I hope) not especially in danger at any gaming table. And within the conetext of the gameworld, not less dangerous to the PC, whose world is as full of peril as the next one. There is a reduced likelihood
in the real world of the player having to change PC due to PC death - but the claim that this harms suspension of disbelief is not one I accept as anything like a universal truth.
my experience with 2e (which actively encouraged DMs to save characters who would otherwise die) is that this causes players to engage less with the gameworld.
If I had to diagnose a cause for disengagement in this sort of 2e play, it would be the railroading. Death flag mechanics expressly avoid railroading and engage the player by fostering protagonism rather than deprotagonising.
But that doesn't alter the fact that a survival-guaranteed game can be played using a survival-not-guaranteed ruleset (generally by RAW), but the reverse is not true.
As I said upthread, this has the problem that it preserves game/metagame tranpsarency at the cost of removing the danger in the gameworld. Death flag mechanics reduce game/metagame transparency but permit the gameworld to remain chock full of peril.
Actually, since books and movies were brought up previously, you should be well aware that this same criticism has been levelled against the type of storytelling (and far more than once) in those media where it is obvious that the hero will survive from the first page.
The only adventure type stories I have read in the past many years are REH Conan and Kull stories, in which I do know from the first page that the protagonist will survive. What is key is that the obviousness isn't itself part of the fiction. As I noted upthread, death flag play requires the same sort of non-breaking of the fourth wall. If players want to go all Order of the Stick (bathing in lava, etc) the game has broken down (just as an AD&D game has broken down when the fighter describes his daily routine of jumping off a 200' cliff before breakfast, then having his friendy cleric Heal him up).
Oh, and for the record, strenuously defending that purist-for-system 1e AD&D play is both possible and satisfying is not in any way shape or form denying that your non-purist game is impossible, or less satisfying for you.
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It is this sort of problem, actually, that made me enter this thread: "I can't use SoD well, therefore it is broken wrongbadfun." When a defense saying, in effect, that it is not broken wrongbadfun becomes "either denying that non-purist-for-system 1st ed AD&D play is possible, or alternatively denying that it is satisfying" there is something wrong.
Fair enough. I'm personally sympathetic to some of Hussar's arguments that SoD has problems that go beyond implementation by poor GMs, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to defend the claim that death-flag play can be fully meaningful roleplaying without lava-bathing nonsense or other failures of suspension of disbelief.
But, in terms of setting up a role-playing game for general consumption, a survival-not-guaranteed game can be fully satisfying for all involved if the Gm is good at his job. I have experienced this, from both sides of the screen, with hundreds of different players and dozens of different GMs. Conversely, every player in your survival-guaranteed better be top-notch to avoid a "No pull on the Jenga tower" game.
This again is an empirical claim that I'm not sure about. WoTC are taking a punt with 4e that it's not as hard as you think - it just requires a different mind-set (or, to use some jargon, a different set of metagame priorities).
