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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8245879" data-attributes="member: 177">And that's fine.  If this thread started out, "Screwdrivers are not good at removing nails," would you feel a need to pipe up that you didn't care if screwdrivers were bad at removing nails, you still want them in your toolbox?  Is it relevant to the nail-impact of screwdrivers, or what you can do to remove nails other than use a screwdriver?  Not really.However, there may still be something worth considering...So, let us talk a little bit about what fear or anxiety does tend to do to people.  Specifically, fear and anxiety tend to make people play it safe.  Broadly speaking, in humans (and mammals more generally - we share the same basic neurology), the more one has to lose, the more one will stick to tried-and-true methods when there is high risk involved.  The basic response is "fight or flight", which are very basic choices, and not terribly creative.So, for example, if on a software development project, the development manager yells at people when anything is even a little bit late, the developers will tend to actively avoid introducing things that might take a little longer, or that have risk of failure and delay, to avoid being yelled at.  The result is a lack of innovation when folks don't feel secure.   This is a fairly well documented effect - Google's Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the #1 determiner for whether a team was going to be effective.Let us consider that in terms of game design.  I have a specific case in mind - the Sentinels Comics RPG.  It is trying to emulate "Silver Age" comics, which, honestly, are kind of wacky.  If people keep to "tried and true and safe" things in the game, they won't really get a Silver Age comics result.So, the first thing towards this end in the design - permanent character death only happens when the player decides the time is right.  A character can be beaten up seven ways from Sunday, be knocked out of a scene, and have other kinds of consequences, but unless the player says so, they'll be back.  A mistake cannot remove their character from play in the long term.This frees the player from a level of anxiety.  There's a limit on how bad a choice can be, and they can feel more free to try wacky things that come to mind, rather than fear what happens if that wacky thing fails.  So, we then have a starting place for choosing what elements work for what you want in a game.  For example - If, as a player, you are interested in what effective tactical choices you can make within a known rules framework, then enabling wacky ideas maybe isn't a big selling point.  If highly out-of-the box creative thinking is what you are interested in, then this is far more attractive.</blockquote>

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