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Every "treasured snowflake leveled-up PC" in my game started life as a rootless vagabond murderhobo in a Gygaxian skilled-play game. A loved, invested-in, 3-dimensional PC is just a murderhobo that survived long enough to become that thing. and they are loved all the more because they could so...

My way around this is: there is no such thing as a low-stakes fight, a low-stakes hallway, a low-stakes door-opening in my campaign. (The way my players have gotten around it is: they've gotten really good at playing this way and avoiding death.) Everyone who has been playing since the...

I think if a character does something or has something attached to them that the PLAYER feels is worse than death ("You're a worm forever now""You eat orphans to live now and always will""Your PC's face looks like a butt"") then you've rendered the character unplayable which is, essentially...

See above.

No, not to the PC, to the PLAYER. Death means that you have to stop playing the game with a given character -- i.e. stop playing the game the way you've been playing for hours or weeks or months or even years. So it's a genuine (not imagined) loss for the player. It's basically saying, "start...

I think it all boils down to this: " The player in question likes to feel powerful. He plays the game because he likes the idea of being a super badass character who can kick everyone's butt and barely break a sweat. He doesn't like the idea that he might lose. He thinks that's unfair. "...

The fact that the game can come to an end is why it's such a great stake. And, no, I don't think any other stake is as interesting in a game (not in dramatic fiction, a whole other form) as not getting to play the game anymore (or at least not gettng to play it in the same way). I challenge you...

"Dead" isn't an interesting result which is why it's a fascinating stake. Threat of death isn't interesting because it's interesting to be dead, it's interesting because nobody (including all the diverse character types) wants to be dead. A good adventure allows diverse character types to use...

When they almost die and don't realize it I tell them.

I've always seen "Near TPK" is the best possible result in a game. The players get all of the the exhilaration of a life or death struggle but then….they do indeed make it. As for the original OP-- I like the idea that a player can be clever and target the ogre's dex or the wizard's strength...

Part of me think this has to do with the dynamic surrounding the doctor. Medical school and medical training require a great deal of reading and books and study and things that are considered nerdy -- at the same time, a lot of doctors are on a power/ego trip where they're trying to impress the...

Pretty easy Gordian knot to untangle: 1. Good, big-budget D&D movie: Good. 2. Bad, big-budget D&D movie: Bad. 3. No big-budget D&D movie at all: not great, but, depending on POV, maybe better than 2, maybe not.

There's an important thing stopping me: I do not ever want someone to think something that isn't true just because of something I said or wrote. If I go "I am not sure about this but here's my prediction..." and someone takes my word as gospel and I'm wrong , that's their fault. I gave them...

Good point. A person who admits they were wrong's way better than someone who doesn't. But I think a healthy dose of "Ok, I've been wrong before so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt…" demonstrates even more self-knowledge. Personally, I never claimed to have any idea how 5e was...

I always wonder--how well does 5e have to do before all of the people who said it would go down because of this, that or the other reason come forward and go: "I'm sorry, internet, I was talking out of my ass. I can't be trusted, ignore me from now on." ?

4e made changes which made it easy to plan a relatively long (more than 2 rounds) fight with mechanically distinct phases that change round to round (first we're here, then we're here, now this guy is on fire) and characters that can get hit over and over and not die which are things very...

Whatever edition warring is: -it's not helpful and -what's going on right now in this thread is it right here.

Yeah there are lots of ways to talk about ideas in meaningful ways without substituting opinion for fact: The "assume everything not obviously fact is opinion" rule is a really bad rule in internet RPG discussion. There are many times in RPGs when it's unclear whether the speaker thinks what...

It's weird when you meet someone in 2015 who still writes their opinion-as-fact, especially this hard.

If 4e had been released as the (formerly known as) Oriental Adventures game side-by-side with 3.5 I think it would have been very well-received.