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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7580142" data-attributes="member: 82106">This though brings up a line of reasoning which is one of the primary, if not THE primary, one that lead me to consider a more story/narrative/zero myth kind of an approach to most RPGing. There is not much value in gotchas. Running into some monster which has a weakness you cannot possibly know and which can't otherwise be defeated, or running into an almost entirely unanticipatable trap (one simply positioned in the midst of an otherwise unremarkable path where no reason exists to suspect traps in that area) etc. These aren't good challenges. They are just &quot;oh, look, you didn't bring salt, you can't defeat the giant leeches&quot; or &quot;oh, too bad, you got ganked by the poison dart trap in hallway #6&quot;. It isn't even an interesting challenge because no challenge existed, you're just now rolling up a new PC just because...I mean, Tomb of Horrors is fine. It advertises itself as stupid deadly &quot;nobody can survive this&quot; stuff, and then it delivers. Clearly you don't take a single footstep in that dungeon until you've taken serious precautions against the utterly deadly trap which IS THERE in pretty close to all cases! But when the DM puts a deadly trap in some random hallway in &quot;the dwarf ruin&quot; it just doesn't add anything. If you just wanted to convey that the place could be deadly, then show me a rusted out trap filled with its last victim! If you want to telegraph that kobolds have taken root here, then spring some minor annoyance trap on the party that was obviously made by them (heck, it can be detected automatically, it doesn't NEED to go off to do its job). This inevitably leads by successive steps to the idea that the purpose of the obstacles in the game isn't really to defeat the players or PCs, its to make life interesting, and the best and most interesting stuff is when it directly bears on what the players WANT to do.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7580142, member: 82106"] This though brings up a line of reasoning which is one of the primary, if not THE primary, one that lead me to consider a more story/narrative/zero myth kind of an approach to most RPGing. There is not much value in gotchas. Running into some monster which has a weakness you cannot possibly know and which can't otherwise be defeated, or running into an almost entirely unanticipatable trap (one simply positioned in the midst of an otherwise unremarkable path where no reason exists to suspect traps in that area) etc. These aren't good challenges. They are just "oh, look, you didn't bring salt, you can't defeat the giant leeches" or "oh, too bad, you got ganked by the poison dart trap in hallway #6". It isn't even an interesting challenge because no challenge existed, you're just now rolling up a new PC just because... I mean, Tomb of Horrors is fine. It advertises itself as stupid deadly "nobody can survive this" stuff, and then it delivers. Clearly you don't take a single footstep in that dungeon until you've taken serious precautions against the utterly deadly trap which IS THERE in pretty close to all cases! But when the DM puts a deadly trap in some random hallway in "the dwarf ruin" it just doesn't add anything. If you just wanted to convey that the place could be deadly, then show me a rusted out trap filled with its last victim! If you want to telegraph that kobolds have taken root here, then spring some minor annoyance trap on the party that was obviously made by them (heck, it can be detected automatically, it doesn't NEED to go off to do its job). This inevitably leads by successive steps to the idea that the purpose of the obstacles in the game isn't really to defeat the players or PCs, its to make life interesting, and the best and most interesting stuff is when it directly bears on what the players WANT to do. [/QUOTE]

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