I personally think too many people have the video game mindset now.
I'd not throw that around w/o explaining your meaning as, from the rest of your post, we have very, very different views on what constitutes "video game mindset".
This "old style" as some are calling it is how I prefer it. I want to be challenged and typically don't like published modules because they are simply too EASY. Oh we encounter a group of orcs. We're going to win but the question is how much resources do we use before we slay them. That's quite boring to me.
Very well. However, I do not think -if that is what you are saying- that unpredictably deadly situations are a good idea in published modules meant for the masses.
This dragon scenario is a great scenario for someone who says "There is a creature I can't just easily destroy. I am a hero and I want to help people. How can I do this in the face of these horrendous odds?" You are forced to not simply kill the creature because it's not as simple as that.
There are a great many assumptions here. Many of those would be dangerous to generalize; it is this variant in expectation that must be dealt with in a module.
No one is saying that situations where the players can't simply go up to foe, slay them dead with little risk, and have it solve everything are a bad idea. What some object to (well, at least one person) is the treatment of the situation. For me, it is the level of information available to players. For others it is the DM gymnastics required to keep the players alive (to keep the game from stopping dead in its tracks.)
Also, and here is where my lack of understanding comes in: I've read a good many posts advocating player death as a teaching mechanic. I'm curious at what it teaches and, and this is most important,
whom it teaches in this instance: if the character dies, the only one I can see learning is the player. If the player role played his character and it died w/o any real chance to learn first, what is learned is to meta-game. i.e. You might
think you wanted to play a brave knight - but, you know, you should probably have your order's moto be something along the lines of : "Discretion be ith the bestest part of the valorous heart!"
Having your PC be caught in a breath attack for "I am dead" points of damage doesn't teach the character anything - it teaches the player that a 1st level character against a dragon of that size is a bad idea. There couldn't be a more meta-game thought process incurred. Having that same character suffer "Crap! I am almost dead" points of damage does teach the character to avoid such a threat in the future (as well as the player, of course.)
I'm not sure why people don't like that? You don't have to fight the dragon. Period. Don't have to. It may not be your favorite encounter but I think it is a good one. Now all the other pieces might not pull together and i'm not claiming it's a great adventure simply that having a dragon around for lower level creatures sets a different tone from the normal hack n slash.
If you were level 8 would you suddenly run into a town where a dragon was? Why? It might be just as unbeatable based on it's power compared to yours still right? Perhaps you may try to reason with it or perhaps you know you can still help without ever getting in a direct confrontation with it. There's no set level where you go "I can definitely take a dragon". Even at higher levels things can still go bad against weaker foes in this edition.
You're super smart? Maybe you'r egotistic and want to see if you're smarter than that dragon? There's so many reasons to still proceed (aside from the obvious one of being good and wanting to help other people even if your life is in danger). Not everyone would do it but then you might not do half the adventure options given to you either.
In my campaigns when i'm the DM you wouldn't give experience for fighting the same orc groups over and over. "Well our level 10 group just slayed another group of those vile orcs! We took some hits (due to the bounded accuracy of AC in 5E) but we beat em pretty easily. The xp for this could be minimal to 0 because you weren't challenged to learn anything new.[/quote[See above. It's not about having "easy to beat encounters". It's about having players being able to make meaningful choices and being able to act as their character would act without being overly punished for it.
I'm not seeing anyone saying -
"that dragon was a stupid idea, there should never be a powerful dragon in a low-level adventure." What I'm seeing is: there was a trap situation for which the "correct" answer was poorly conveyed OR was too strictly enforced OR there were to many assumptions that do not mesh, etc.
Having to deal with a deadly force you cannot win is a pretty cool way to learn something about your character.
I understand this is probably a question of wording - but, if cannot win, you cannot win. The only thing you learn is how you deal with the death of the game. If your meaning is that you cannot win in a direct manner of simply hacking at them till they stop twitching, then we are in accord - to a point.
The intent here is to give you unique situations and I think a dragon at lower levels is cool. You may think you're going to die (or you may run the other way) but it's not the typical one a level 1 player might see AND it's not an auto win (BORING IMO) encounter.
It is one of the reasons why I'm thinking it might not be that horrible to try and play a pre-made module because perhaps it's not super easy fights for once.
The idea
is cool, its the implementation.
As for your last phrase, I can only suggest to you to very simply double ALL foes in all encounters from regular pre-made modules. It is the easiest solution I can think of to make the encounters "not super easy fights" and it adds very little work for the DM. Honestly, it might fix a great deal of what you profess to dislike about the pre-made modules.
