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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8244546" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's correct. If I were in fact conflating the two, I would struggle to respond to you. But I am not speaking of that. I hadn't meant to call out Lanefan, who was the one that prompted some of this thinking, but it seems a quotation is now in order. From another thread:Lanefan pretty clearly says here that players should be at least a little paranoid, and at least implies that victories are less special if everything isn't inherently opposed to you.And the thing is, I've seen this attitude a lot. The idea that you need to "scare your players straight," that players SHOULD genuinely feel afraid for their ability to keep playing, not just concerned or mindful or alert. As I said, it's an old school notion, though it can appear nearly anywhere. You see it in a lot of early video game design, especially in fantasy RPGs (including many early MMOs), where the player is taught to be paranoid of traps or goofing up the approach for a fight, for instance. And I don't use "paranoid" lightly here, it really can be "one or two errors and you're just dead, and all your gear drops where you died, so you have to trek back naked to recover it...and hope no one steals it first." (Oh, EverQuest. You were so user-unfriendly.)It really, truly does seem like the prevailing attitude from a significant portion of DMs is like that one player (and convention DM) that [USER=52734]@Stormonu[/USER] described. The attitude that if you DIDN'T "earn" your way to level 12 on a pile of dead characters, if you DIDN'T have to lose three characters to accidentally forgetting to move only 5' at a time and poking forward with a pole, if you WEREN'T the victim of ear worms or cloakers or rust monsters or awful cursed items at least once apiece, then your victories never really mattered, weren't authentic or genuine. You had to go through that winnowing, that harrowing, because apparently the only alternative to that is that you just got everything handed to you on a mithril platter.I also take a little bit of issue with your comparison to paintball, if only because by that logic, any sport where you aren't ever supposed to suffer injury would inherently become uninteresting, and...that would exclude a lot of very interesting sports. Like tennis, golf, swimming, most Olympic competitions...and if you admit there are sports that can remain interesting without the high probability of injury, then it seems to make your argument by analogy pretty weak. I did repeatedly said that fear should remain A motivator, just not THE motivator.[USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] : Just want to reiterate that I don't want this to feel like calling you out. My thoughts went far afield of what you said. But these words did spark the thought, even if the blaze went on, and thus they provide context. If I have misrepresented your position in any way, I welcome correction.</blockquote>

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