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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kzach" data-source="post: 5897869" data-attributes="member: 56189">A point came up recently in some other discussion about 5e and how someone's preference was for challenges in the game to be up to the player to solve, not their character. I took issue with this and felt it was worthy of a separate discussion.In my incredibly righteous and most humble of opinions, which also happens to be 100% and inarguably correct, I think a game should CHALLENGE the character, but ENGAGE the player.To me, I'm playing a game as a form of escapism. I want to live vicariously through my character. I am completely and utterly hopeless when it comes to riddles and puzzles. In fact, I despise them and any joy in the world that I've managed to scrape together and hoard in a little dark corner of my psyche is obliterated whenever I'm forced to deal with either one of these. But I love to play characters that are excellent at solving these things.Just like I can't swing a sword and jump epically over walls, I want to do these things with my character, not be forced to reenact them in real life. I can't slay dragons in real life either or steal the crown jewels and murder the king and usurp his throne. That, to me, is the magic of RPG's.The problem, I find, is that games sometimes become ALL about the mechanical aspects and forget to engage the player. This can be boiled down to the old "hack'n'slash vs. roleplay" dichotomy but I think it's more complex than that. Roleplay isn't necessarily engaging the player just as much as challenging the character doesn't always come down to rolling the dice.I, as a person, need to be drawn into the conflict of the story. I need to be part of the drama and see events unfold and transpire all around my character. I need to have some impact or influence over those events both through mechanical solutions and roleplaying scenarios.And this is where I think most DM's and modules fall short. They tend to focus solely on challenging the player or the character, in an attempt to engage the player. To me, these two things are fundamentally different and yet not mutually opposed.</blockquote>

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