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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9534637" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Through:1. The DM being forthright with the players about what they want and what they intend to include in the game, assuming that's the experience the DM wishes to pursue. "Always remember that retreat is not a fault, it's a smart move." Of course, the DM must also then actually reward the things they want to see, not exclusively punish the things they don't, because the latter very easily leads to perverse incentives. (Frex, if you only punish "unwise" choices, but don't actually give commensurate rewards to wise ones, you're much more likely to train players who are so hyper-cautious, they see absolutely any risk whatsoever as unacceptable, and thus have a far worse time of things.)2. Especially for totally brand-new players? Learning by having a model to follow. Perhaps have a powerful but temporary ally NPC, who the newbies can petition for advice, and who can make a (diegetic) case for avoiding danger or retreating from an unwinnable fight.3. Slowly ramping up the threat threshold, rather than INSTANTLY slamming face-first into deadly difficulty at mach 7. Start off with a winnable fight or two, then field a fight that looks much more dangerous than it really is (perhaps a horde of weak, slow enemies that look terrifying) so the players have a "oh naughty word, we HAVE to run" response. Alternatively, open with a "fight" in name only--no actual combat occurs, but the PCs need to escape because they know they're in too much danger, e.g. a prison escape where staying to tangle with the guards almost surely means being recaptured.4. EmphasizingI mean, I certainly think that there's something to it, but it's not determinative. After all, Dungeon World, a "story now" game, evolved out of the way its creators remembered playing old-school D&D. So even people who really loved that experience can still be invested in a narrative/emotional way rather than an achievement/mechanical way. It's a general trend, but all general trends have exceptions. As a general trend, early-edition D&D strongly encourages a pawn-stance, roleplay-lite, mercenary, pecuniary, mechanically-selfish approach to play. As a looser but still present general trend, newer-school D&D encourages an actor- or director-stance, roleplay-heavy, collaborative, emotive, mechanically-interactive approach to play. Because of those significant differences, they aim for different play-experiences and offer different incentives.I definitely think that your belief that the majority of players are rarely or never moved by emotional impact is directly effected by your preference for the most classic of old-school approaches to play.Alright. Let's talk about it.Well then, your problem is that you have defined away anything that could potentially change your mind, and thus your argument is circular: "nothing else besides X matters because nothing else is a significant failure state, and I have defined a significant failure state such that it excludes everything but X."Why should we accept this definition of a "significant failure state" and not some other, more inclusive definition? Why is yours, the one that prioritizes purely game-mechanical expression to the exclusion of all else, the one and only valid choice? Obviously, the simple answer is that it isn't the one and only valid choice.Whereas for me, game-mechanical failure states are only useful as tools because they lead to in-story failure states. It is the in-story failure states that are where the real penalties lie, because once a story is told, you can't tell it different. You can tell a new story that follows after it, using that as its raw material, but (barring time travel shenanigans) you can't go back and rewrite the story the party has already known. I appreciate game-mechanical consequences insofar as they help enable in-story consequences. I have relatively little use for them otherwise. The penalty for failure is having the world (or your character) change in a way that upsets you, that disappoints you, that makes you feel regret or anger or loss or dread. Maybe whatever happened is fixable, maybe it isn't and you'll just have to learn to live with it. I find that significantly more daunting--and rewarding!--than the momentary pang of losing your game-piece and then sighing and rolling up a new one. As was referenced before, Frodo taking a Nazgul knife wound, and thus having a permanent nagging mark for the rest of his life. It would have been significantly less interesting to simply have Frodo die at Weathertop and get replaced by Freauxdo, the Halfling Trader who happened to be in Rivendell to sell pipeweed to Bilbo--and the malingering effects of both the wound and the Ring wouldn't have nearly as much impact if the Ring-Bearer changed seven times along the way because the previous one died. For precisely the same reasons, even though TTRPGs and novels are different things, it often is the case (not always, but often!) that it is significantly less interesting to just kill off characters left and right for random BS than it is to have characters suffer because of their past failures, misjudgments, traumas etc., etc.Whereas IMO and IME it is by far the most important thing for the majority of modern players, and having a game driven by these factors is very specifically one of the most important design differences between old-school and "new"-school D&D. The fact that that older style has almost entirely fallen by the wayside, even with the OSR's massive resurgence, pretty clearly tells me that totally abjuring any emotional "heft" as unreliable and mostly ineffective is simply, totally false.Consider, for example, that most White Wolf games specifically work to make such emotional heft the core focus of play--and that this was one of the biggest criticisms of what we now call old-school D&D vs those newer, competing games.</blockquote>

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