NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Odhanan" data-source="post: 5439152" data-attributes="member: 12324">For me the example is not appropriate, because the sum of the activities played out and the tension experienced by the players as they play a role playing game is not contained within the rules. It's what's going on around them. See my example with the corridors before. My point was to show how SoD matters in terms of choices before you, when you are aware you are about to be confronted to a save-or-die situation if you negociate it in a certain way (i.e. taking the middle corridor with a SoD effect instead of left or right, which are less troublesome paths but longer to go through, or the example of the creature which you know will trigger a SoD if you confront it by fighting it, like the beholder in the next room, or the rust monster as far as your equipment's concerned). The tension isn't in the action of making a roll when you are confronted to a SoD. It is in knowing that there is a SoD situation ahead, and thereby thinking of strategies and tactics that will allow you to avoid the threat or deal with it in ways that will not trigger a SoD (by negociating with the beholder for instance and pointing out how the dragon from the prior level stole some magic item he cared about, thus agreeing to retrieve the item for it in exchange for passage through his lair, or in the case of rust monsters either go down the chasm and fight the monsters, with the risk of losing your equipment, or fighting with sticks and stones instead, at your disadvantage, or instead taking the rope bridges above the monsters, or improvising another solution altogether). The tension and dramatic choices are not contained within the rules. It goes on in the actual game, aside of the rule, while the presence of the rule itself is a tool that help provide significant obstacles and threats that are mitigated by a number of choices in the game.The game is not the rules. The rules are not the game.</blockquote>

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