Preferences cannot be taught. They simply exist, or don't. They might arise from exposure...but they also might not. "I can teach you to like this!" is a massive error.
Our experiences differ, then.
Except it isn't. Like it literally isn't. A "sheer gamble" makes it a roulette-wheel situation. That is not what it is. At all. The game has designed math. You may dislike that fact all you like--it's still true. It is not "a sheer gamble". The game literally isn't designed that way--and it never was, not even in OD&D.
If I declare an action for my character (let's say I'm attacking a foe in melee) that, before any modifiers, needs me to roll 13 or higher on a d20 in order to succeed. As a skilled player, I then take (or have already taken) some steps and actions to improve my odds - I use a magic weapon that I'm proficient with, I come in
en flanc to negate my foe's shield bonus because the shield's in use against my ally, I've already boosted my strength - and get it so I only need to roll 7 or better to hit.
I've improved my odds of success from 8/20 to 14/20. Pretty decent, huh?
But that's all I can do, and the odds are now set. And so, when I roll the d20 it becomes a straight-up gamble as to whether or not I can beat those (improved) odds.
And note that it's a gamble regardless of what the odds are, as long as success and failure are both still possible outcomes. Even if I can only fail on a natural 1, I'm still gamblng that I won't roll that 1 when I toss the die.
More to the point: You're right, but you're missing two critical things. First, it's not "winning too often", it's winning without earning it too often. Victories you earn are always valid, doesn't matter if you've won 10 or 1000 or 1,000,000. A good general winning ten battles in a row doesn't feel like the tenth battle was a dull waste of time. Second, you're forgetting that losing too often also sours things, but in the opposite direction. It's not just that there's no thrill to be had, it's that even the victories taste like defeat.
In a sports league where tanking to get a better draft position is a thing then yes, victory in a poor season can taste like defeat.
I've never seen a situation in an RPG where tanking is desirable, though. For me, a victory that takes 10 tries to achieve tastes far sweeter when it happens than one that only took two tries, or just one.
That's the problem here. Hyper ultra mega lethality where you lose characters left and right doesn't feel good. It sucks. A lot. And given how much crappy awful darkness there is in our world right now, a lot of people are not interested in an experience which will grind them into the dirt, spit on them, and call them names for daring to do anything cool or heroic or exciting.
I'm not even talking about character lethality here. A character can keep right on truckin' even though its player had a shite night with the dice and never rolled higher than a 5; and sometimes player skill can be very useful here in keeping the character functional and-or useful even when the dice don't co-operate.
And you don't think that maybe, just maybe, your group is not a representative sample because you've specifically selected for people who share your tastes, and selected against those who are completely the opposite?
The fact that you, a self-avowed OSR-style GM who actively cultivates a devil-may-care, hyper-mercenary attitude amongst your players. That's not how most people play D&D, and you will not succeed at "teaching" people that their preferences should be yours.
To bust out a famous quote from an old Prime Minister of ours: "Just watch me."
First part: I already said that? Like that's what I literally said. Chance exists to prevent ossified SOPs and flawless plans. Second: I consider this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing is made so no one plays it so nothing is made. PLENTY of high-level adventure paths have been made by Paizo and ENWorld and have done fantastically well, e.g. Zeitgeist goes all the way to 30 in the original 4e version.
"There's a reason" may be "they don't make it so no one plays it".
There's a bit of chicken-and-egg involved, to be sure; but ever since day 1 high level adventures haven't sold nearly as well as low-mid level adventures, meaning there's less monetary incentive for anyone to produce and publish them.
And while I certainly don't own anywhere near all of them, the WotC-made 4e and 5e AP books I do own all seem to tap out at around 15th level.
Then those rules should not be present in the PHB. If they aren't intended to be used--if they're meant as a supplement to the actual game--then they should be just that. A supplement.
If it ain't core, it don't score. Have it in the core books but as optional, maybe.
Why? It's a fact. I have a miniature pinscher that is almost 21 years old. Does that change the fact that most miniature pinschers don't live past 16 years old? No, it does not. Hence: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Data has to be collected correctly, and if you don't, it's...gonna be a problem.
And if I then ask 19 other min-pin owners how long their dogs had lived I'd get a variety of anecdotal answers that would, for my purposes, be in aggregate good enough to give me a vague idea of how long I could expect one to live were I to adopt one and take good care of it.
Not everything has to be done to scientific or peer-reviewable standards.
Again, there are degrees of randomness. This is one that has a low degree of randomness.
By "low" you mean zero, in that there are no random elements to chess and checkers - the outcome is 100% determined by the players' moves.
What? No, certainly not with 5e. 5e actively encourages GMs to treat the rules as meaningless suggestions to be cast aside whenever, wherever, and however they feel like. It's one of the most irritating things about it!
I didn't get that impression from the 5e books. I only have the first three, though; and haven't (and probably won't) get the 5.5e set.
Ah, but is it "tweaking" things? Or is it "wholly reinventing the game every other session"? Because I have had far too much of the latter already.
We're talking about different things here, I think.
When I talk about tweaking or kitbashing a game system, I mean changing the rules before play begins and then, as rulings are required as play goes along, locking those rulings in as part of the developing system. Whatever the rules in use are and however much they've deviated from what the books say, they are and remain consistent with themselves.
I am
not talking about being inconsistent with the rules on a session-to-session basis. IMO that's awful DMing.
I prefer a small number of signature items that the player truly values and cares about. "Easy come, easy go" makes for "yawn, next?" in my experience--items aren't valued, they're just disposable trash because you know it'll all be taken away sooner rather than later.
Items are valued for their value. They cost money, either to claim from treasury or buy in town or have commissioned. And when an item gets whacked you-as-character are out the money you spent on it.
If an item has enough sentimental value that you don't want to risk losing it, don't take it out in the field and expose it to risk. Yes that's a tough choice, but that's something the game IMO needs more of: tough choices.
Wait...do you think WBL means players MUST have EXACTLY those values...? Good Lord, no wonder you think it's a terrible thing! It's just a benchmark.
It still pre-packages things far more than I prefer.
Certainly. That's why I always include elements in my design proposals that I know, without doubt, are not for me, but which would please others. Or, better still, elements which serve both of our needs in different ways, and which empower GMs to make their own decisions about what kind of game they should have.
I just demand that the game itself actually be...y'know, one that genuinely runs, and runs well, for the playstyles the designers intended and told the players about. If it actually needs changes just to function, it's a bad game. If it is requiring the GM to act like the flight computer of the F-117, constantly making corrections because the plane cannot fly without such corrections because it is inherently aerodynamically unstable, then no, that's not acceptable and I don't think you should have to accept that any more than I do.
I think the mistake here, when talking about a big-tent game like D&D, is the designers "intending" any playstyles over any other. If they just design as playstyle-agnostic a game as they can and leave it to us DMs to tweak or kitbash it as we like (they could maybe even offer some tips and pointers on this!), that's IMO far better than trying to soft-force a playstyle.
Again, this is why I push SO HARD on the need for "novice levels" (read: robust, well-made rules for going from "the absolute bare minimum mechanics to be 'a character'" to "everything except one tiny missing piece to be a proper 1st level character") and, relatedly, the need for "incremental advancement" rules (read: robust, well-made rules for doling out little tiny pieces of a character's next level-up benefits). Because such rules don't just support you--they support several playstyles that I, personally, have no interest in, AND ALSO support brand-new players getting a gentler but still challenging introduction to the D&D experience. (Or an utterly ungentle one, if that's what the GM desires--but no GM is forced to be ungentle, nor to be gentle for that matter. They choose what end to turn these robust rules toward.)
We agree on this, and I too want the game to be able to support lots of different playstyles.
Where we disagree, I think, is on the 'how'. Personally, I think it's
way simpler for a DM to make a game easier and-or gentler and-or less complex than it is for a DM to do the reverse, mostly because she doesn't have to fight against her players (who naturally want things to be easy on them); meaning that making the game difficult and un-gentle and maybe quite complicated right out the gate is a net DM benefit.
But what does "tweaked" mean? Because for me, "tweaking" is making small, I emphasize small, situational adjustments--a number here, a spell there. The way you describe it, it's much more like "alright, I'm going to rebuild the spell system from the ground up", which looks nothing like "tweaking" to me, and instead looks like paying for the privilege of having to do all the designers' work for them.
To me, 'tweaking' is largely syonoymous with 'kitbashing', and covers everything from a trivial spell adjustment to entirely rebuilding major parts of the system.
Adding-deleting-modifying entire classes and-or playable species = tweak.
Designing a new initiative system from scratch = tweak.
Giving
Command a duration of 2 rounds rather than 1 = tweak.
