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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9396103" data-attributes="member: 20323">Rather than jumping to the response you did, I wish you'd made more effort to understand what I was saying. If that's the conclusion you've settled on – that I hold disdain for players – I can't stop you from believing that or believing what you will about how I host games. But I would like to offer a deeper dive if you care to listen.I will compare anyone to a toddler. You, myself, a priest, a politician, a company, a culture. There's nothing disdainful about it. Sometimes we all want things that are not in our best interest. Like lab animals, we want to keep hitting the "Reward Now" button. We develop skills to restrain that impulse, but it's still there. Sometimes I don't regulate that part of myself as well as I'd like and I overindulge, maybe too much junk fiction or bad movies. This can happen to individual and groups. It doesn't mean they aren't any less worth being listened to, valued, regarded seriously for their positions. All it means is there's this part of them that struggles to be regulated.Similarly, a parent, or a mentor, or a leader of an organization, or even game designers can help to restrain those "Reward Now" impulses in favor of a longer-term view, or they can take the easier road of being liked for giving that reward out again and again.In game design you can reach a point of too much power being given out – I believe we can all agree that this happened during 3rd edition and during 2nd edition Skills & Powers, and at other points during the game. Most players love that power – I love that power – that's part of the D&D power fantasy. But when the game designers feed that too much, when they diminish other aspects of the game in order to prioritize more and more escalating power, it starts to create problems for the game. The GM might be the first one to notice that, but the players will soon afterward.No one has done anything wrong. No one should be viewed with disdain.But there can be an overall sense of dissatisfaction with the game. Why? Well, one thing that I've seen happen is that perfectly natural "Reward Now" impulse gets overindulged. Yes, some players might say "hmm, I'm not going to take Option X because it would interfere with Narrative reason Y", while many others players might say "oh, I am totally taking Option X, and Y and Z too!"Neither is wrong. Neither is right.Because that sort of self-regulation? That's not the players job. The whole appeal behind fantasy gaming is to have fun, and that often means not having to worry about that kind of self-regulation that life demands enough of us. And still some players might enjoy applying that self-regulation, which is also fine, but again that's not their job.I would argue that is the job of the game.The point is that there are design decisions that can be made to help mitigate that perfectly natural tendency.There's a great bit of research from Czech-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – if I'm remembering right – that talks about the optimum amount of success for people to feel most engaged is about 70%. Too low and it's easy to become discouraged. Too high and there's a sort of listlessness or feeling there's no point.Another way to say this: The 70% is for encouragement, the 30% is for learning and growth.Say I'm the player. And you're the game designer. To design a game that hits that sweet spot, you cannot consistently encourage my perfectly natural toddler-like "Reward Now" button. In the short term? Oh man, I'm loooooving you. But in the long term? It's ultimately going to backfire.OK, I've explained my bit. Judge me as you will.</blockquote>

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