DM versus Players

[Ariosto]

Well, there's been an evolving difference in how "D&D" is assumed to work. Consider these assumptions about the role of the DM:

(1) The DM creates an environment and impartially moderates interactions within it. If the "playing field" as a whole is much too difficult or too easy, then players are likely to lose interest. However, within the range provided, it is up to the players to seek their desired level of risk and reward.

(2) The DM creates a series of encounters "balanced" (according to rules) against a party of a given number of characters of a given level. It is now (at least primarily) up to the DM to determine what players face, so where does strategy come in? It comes in with "builds" -- and the situation can start to look like opponents spending points and looking for loopholes on army lists before a war-game tournament.

(3) Players reject the the designers' suggested range of encounter difficulties -- especially the provision for those that are actually very hard (and thus unlikely) to beat. The view gains traction that players triumphing should be the default, not an outcome in doubt without players stretching their skills. The DM's role thus becomes one of extreme partiality in the players' favor. The rules get redesigned to minimize variation in outcomes due to variations in player skill, and to increase predictability overall. Now, it may not be enough for a DM even to have set up a "fair" encounter if the outcome is a setback for the PCs.

Here we are passing out of the realm of game and into the domain of illusion, the appearance of game for the sake of theatrics (like a casino set on the stage of a James Bond movie production). It's not an instantaneous change of state, but rather a gradual slithering across the threshold, and it is not yet complete.

 

[Ariosto]

One thing is that even with the effort to minimize effects of skill, 4e leaves it some room in combat. There's not a terrible risk of inept players having "too hard" a time of it (except as one can lower that bar arbitrarily; and there's no keeping players from getting a TPK if they're obstinate enough) -- but poor play on the DM's part can make an encounter "too easy". That's how it seems to me, anyway.

It might be not that sticking your head in the green demon's mouth was player stupidity, it might be that engaging it in the first place was questionable.

Apparently you missed (or are unfamiliar with) the reference to the Tomb of Horrors. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to state that it is most unwise -- as is what it takes to spring a certain pit trap. If you have played enough "old-school" D&D to have a character survive and succeed to the level recommended for that module, then you ought to have learned better long ago.

 

[Ariosto]

[Level draining] just seemed to negate everything you did in the past several sessions.

Indeed, but setbacks are hardly unknown in other game forms; the potential is generally considered to be what makes attainment of goals interesting. Knowing that level drain is an undesired consequence, one so shapes ones strategy as to avoid it -- unless one assesses the risk as worth some potential reward. That is commonly what it means to play a game skillfully.

Now, there is the factor that D & D was originally designed by and for people accustomed to "wargames campaigns". The scope of those in time, strategy, chance, and ebb and flow of outcomes (including the possibility of a prolonged strategic defense merely delaying defeat) may well demand qualities rarely tapped in "mainstream" games -- but figuring in the D & D scheme.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't like level drain for a simple reason: I think forgetting Knowledge (royalty) because something drained your life force is kind of dumb.

Maybe having a "Knowledge (royalty)" rating depend on character level is kind of dumb, quite apart from that.

It could be an unanticipated consequence of chrome-plating a game designed for something entirely different. On the other hand, it might have made sense to the 3e designers that dementia should be part of the loss of humanity in descent into the state of unnatural death due to life-draining.