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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 9258951" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Most board games (and, indeed, most games) have a defined game objective. "OBJECT: The object of the game is to become thewealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property. [...] A bankrupt player must immediately retire from the game. The last player left in the game wins."TTRPGs are a little unique. If they did have an objective, it would be something like: "OBJECT: The object of the game is to simulate a game world and tell a compelling story (or series of diagetically consistent events) using one or more characters that may or may not be roleplayed. If the story ends prematurely, all players lose."Really, though, each TTRPG is a collection of subgame systems. You "win" D&D combat when you survive. You "win" a skill check when you overcome the obstacle. You "win" a social encounter when you accomplish one or more goals. And you only truly lose when you can't or don't play the next subgame, and can't continue the story with plain roleplay. Each subgame system is a traditional game with legacy elements, or else roleplay. This is bleeding into a post I've long intended to make, so I'll stop now.There have already been many attempts to correct or address this. "Fail forward" design exists in part to address this. Same with damage on a miss effects. It's also why some games have done away with attack rolls entirely. There's also a major balancing act in any TTRPG tied to pace of play. You might use a hundred die rolls to resolve a single combat, or just one. It depends very much on what the players are trying to focus on.The issue is that players don't lose just because characters are killed. They lose when they story ends prematurely. If the campaign falls apart. That's how you lose at D&D. But characters don't win or lose the game. Players do. And players can just... create another character. Imagine if you were playing Battleship and once your opponent sunk your fleet, you could just... get a new fleet and start again. TTRPGs do that. Even if you keep a dead character, death may not be the end of that character's story. They can be restored to life. They can act in the spirit form. That's why the end happens when you don't know how to continue the story. Even in a modern game like Call of Cthulhu, you can just continue the game with a new character when one dies.That would work if all characters used identical resources. That's why the Reliable keyword existed in 4e. You could pick options that would always work. Arguably, all the daily powers should have this keyword, but it's not terrible that they don't. But in 5e D&D, spellcasting is already overwhelmingly better than any other class feature available. That mechanic does not need any improvement, especially at high level. Quite the opposite. "I lost my spell level to no effect" is not a great design, but it's probably the least bad part of the overall design of spellcasting. We should fix the rest of it first.Sure, but not all TTRPGs are. Some are about politics, or romance, or any number of things. Fighting is fun because it's an easy conflict to manufacture (you fight or you die) and it's easy to definitively resolve the outcome (you died or you killed them all). It's actually the easiest way to make the game very light and without a lot of consequences.This is a common rule in some systems. The book will tell you, "When the outcome of combat is clear, skip to the end. Don't play out the slog." However... some players seem to like the slog.Mostly because why you play what you play is extremely subjective. That said, I think we overplay D&D. I think D&D has tried to position itself as the Ur-TTRPG, and it does a great disservice to the hobby because of it.</blockquote>

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