It's a common reaction of younger people to claim that any suggestion that changes in life have occurred in ways that "don't sound good" is simply an old person reacting to/hating on the young. I've even encountered people who believe there are no generational differences, despite all the research and other evidence to the contrary. The possibility that changes in attitudes really have happened - and anyone who knows history knows that attitudes DO change strongly over time - is ignored. This becomes an ad hominem argument: "it came from an old person so it doesn't count and we can just make fun of it". That's a logical fallacy, folks. Something like "Hitler liked it so it must be bad", which is of course nonsense. What matters is whether something is true, not who's identifying or describing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem "Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is now usually understood as a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."
In other words, when you try to interpret/divine what "I want" (usually incorrectly), when you blame me or "old geezers" for what I've described, you've *LOST ALL CREDIBILITY.*
Once again, I am editorially constrained to 500 words, which doesn't leave room for many examples. If I had had a thousand words, I'd have provided more examples. Btw, SMHWorlds, Coreyartus, I'm talking about ALL games, not just RPGs and certainly not just D&D. Nor do I see where I've failed to recognize that much of it comes from the GM, not the rules, in RPGs.
Than you, RevTurkey, Lanefan (yes, you explain very well in your initial post, but also ran well over my word limit!), JeffB, Derren, J.L.Duncan, Over-the-Hill, Pemerton, Libramarian, and others. Nice shot, AmerigoV! Yes, S'mon, that's true, I was around 30 then, not an "old geezer". Then as now I tried to say what I meant without worrying about whether others would agree, and I despise political correctness and rampant egalitarianism as much now as then.
My point in the OP is about what people expect to do and achieve when playing the game, not about what kind of thing they're looking to get from the game. Two people can expect the same "reward" (better, award), in the latter sense, yet want the game to play very differently. Diablo III gives lots of loot, just as many other games, but it's fully a reward-based game in the sense that you are going to easily get loads of loot, you don't have to earn it in any significant way, while in some other loot games (tabletop RPGs as run by a minority of GMs) you have to earn what you get.
In a way we could say reward-based games are like Monty Haul adventures, but that still focuses on the amount of the reward more than on what you have to do to get it.
You could take a party game such as Apples to Apples or any of its reward-based progeny (such as Cards Against Humanity), add big-money stakes (money from the players) to it, and it would become (as much as is possible within the hardly-competitive rules) a game of consequence rather than one of reward.
Yes, D&D grew out of wargaming. Out of Dave Arneson's miniatures battle campaign, while Gary Gygax was an officer in the International Federation of Wargamers (national game clubs were a thing in the late 60s). Naturally, with players initially coming from wargaming, there was a greater emphasis on challenge. But the attitude change is not unique to RPGs. The consequence-reward change is often discussed and glaringly obvious in video games. One of the topics discussed is how much easier it is to play video games successfully these days.
People are now taught that they should never be uncomfortable, and that notion extends into games, at times. Video players of adventure/action/RP games have come to expect a "loot drop" from every monster, no matter how innocuous. Quite apart from how you can use your save games to keep doing the same thing (such as open a chest) again and again until you get a result you really like. (The guys I know personally who do this are over 60; it's not generational in and of itself.)
One of the advantages of single-player video games is that game developers can let players who are only interested in story go through the story without having to work at it. I've advocated an "autopilot" mode in video games for many years, and a few games have contained some form of same, so that when it gets too much like work or too tough, the player can let the computer play through the difficult part while the player watches, then continues with the story thereafter. However, many hard-core video gamers still react pretty negatively to the notion, even though it wouldn't affect how they play in any way. I guess they're worried that they'll succumb to temptation and use the autopilot, or they're worried about polluting the pseudo-competition of comparing times taken to "beat a game."
I did not use the old training cost rules of AD&D, because it turned PCs into money-grubbers rather than adventurers. On the other hand, players never swam in gold because I drastically reduced monetary rewards. I used my own experience method based on how well the players accomplished their mission; gold didn't come into it. Again, as someone said, it's the GM, not the rules, that most strongly determines the balance and style of cost/reward.
Saelorn, the consequence of going down to 1 HP is felt during the adventure, even though it's all healed up later. During the adventure it changes tactics and even strategy. Still, the point I tried to make is about how choices of the players make a significant difference to the *outcome*, or do not.
Saracenus, you have failed just as much as most people to figure out what I want. I abhor horror of any kind. I do NOT want complicated combat. I don't want complicated anything, because you can make a game with lots of gameplay depth without being complicated (in fact, that's superior to complicated games). I despise legacy games, which stink to me of planned obsolescence. And so forth. Trying to figure out what an author wants based on a 500 word piece is a fool's errand.
Hussar seems to be particularly out of touch with logic:
"No, but it is right to dismiss someone's opinion when it carries no weight, isn't supported by the actual facts, and has been repeated ad nauseam over the past thirty years."
The comments above have suggested many "actual facts" that I could not possibly include in 500 words. That something has been repeated a lot for a long time neither makes it true nor untrue, logically. And if you want an opinion to carry "weight," what are your criteria? By any reasonable criteria I've ever seen, mine carries far more weight than any random commenter's does. But that weight is not and should not be a criteria for establishing whether something is true or untrue. Your notion that it should is a subtle form of the ad hominem fallacy. More bad logic.
I have no idea how what I've said can come to be interpreted as "a certain style of RPG as 'games of consequence' when what the consequences are of is the fact that you rolled poorly." A player who wants to stay alive in most RPGs wants to limit the number of times he must make a good roll to avoid dying. And GMs who like rot grubs and other methods of killing someone out of nowhere, are turning the game into a button-pushing exercise, push some buttons and hope you don't get unlucky. (Of course, you've probably seen this explicitly, though more often it's levers than buttons.)
ENWorld can always be relied on for a very wide spectrum of comments. Heaven help me if I ever deliberately try to stir up comments.
