Theory of Games's latest activity

If optimizing wasn't encouraged behavior by default the game shouldn't make optimizing good. Case in point: Swords & Wizardry Complete...

I'd certainly agree the direct, honest communication at the beginning of the campaign is the way to go. When I ran Delta Green years...

I run open-ended games, myself, though I don't self-describe them as "sandboxes," and the players explicitly set goals, and at least...

I mostly run open-world sandboxes. Play lives and dies with player and PC goals. But at no point have my players told me they lost the...

Monopoly is a lot like thermonuclear war in that the only way to win is not to play at all.

It's a matter of degree. Being sad about losing a character is one thing. Being so worried about it that you feel it can't happen in the...

Yeah, loss conditions tend to be things like "the demon is summoned," "the capital falls," "our political rival is elected," and the...

As I said, in the post immediately before yours, I think the players being able to decide on their goals is one of the primary...

No it does not. Or, have you never lost playing solitaire?

You can lose in a tournament module. (You can, I won't.)

Well, the problem there is that PCs aren't shabby at making a retreat impossible for opposition in a lot of games either, and a lot of...

When my group played 5E they never ran. When we played AD&D, they did. Superheroes v Heroes.

One of the things that complicates this is a lot of games have really poor rules for handling attempts to flee. The net effect of that...

I’m an older gamer and we used to run away in 1st/2nd edition as it was deadlier. I’m wondering at some point it became 2 easy to keep...

Giving Gods stats was a mistake. I think it set the expectation that anything can be killed. Though, occasionally I have tried to run...