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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7595662" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I'm trying to figure out how letting you know your word choice could lead to problematic assumptions led to you bearing the cross of... doing the job of a DM? I never spoke about what types of challenges you put in front of your players, I was just saying that describing approaches as "good" or "bad" is problematic. Yes? What does this have to do with what I was trying to say? This is so surreal. It'd be like telling a friend he's going to get in less trouble if he stops telling his wife "You'd be less ugly if you did this" and him responding about the fidelity of marriage... Yes, you are right, still doesn't change the fact that implying your wife is ugly at all by saying she'd be "less ugly" is a poor choice and you will get less grief if you avoid it. Sorry, I forgot I mentioned an honor duel in that list a while back. I'll try and handle these seperately.Turtling:I stand by the idea that if every check led to the potential to make everything worse, I would see players less willing to take risks. I do see this in some players already, which is why I think changing things to make failure more punishing would lead to an increase in this behavior. However, in my current games, I usually only see this behavior in new players and they eventually relax, because they see that even if they fail, it is usually not the end of the world. Making it so failure leads to demonstrably worse results will make that less obvious to them, because a string of failures will teach them that trying just makes things worse for everyone. Hopefully that clears that up. Honor Duel:I think the big part here comes from the intention of the plan. I mentioned in the post you are refering "Accidentally" getting in an honor duel, which to me refers to situations where even winning the duel is a poor result. It isn't the plan, and in fact it works against the plan. However, since I posted that we have had some people point out that the Honor Duel can be the fighting man's (or woman's) answer to that social situation. In that case, it is the plan, and if the fighter leans into that plan it can be seen as not a bad result, but things working as intended. Hope that clears that one up. I respect that that is your view, but I tend to disagree. The players go to disable a powerful ritual circle, they don't know the consequences for failure. Maybe they will fail and the circle will stand, maybe it will blow up, maybe it will unleash some mutated horror. They don't know, and that murky future can be interesting for some players. They aren't making decisions because they know what will happen, but because they are just as blind as any other character in any other medium about where their choices will lead them. Sure, sometimes things are obvious, sometimes they know what the consequences for failure are and that makes for the tension, but other times it should be unknown. The swashbuckler doesn't need to know that failing that acrobatics check means they break the chandelier and fall. They have no way to know that in the heat of combat. I'm still miffed about that, but not for the reason you think. I still think that was a funny way to express what I was thinking. Which was that I was "dying on the hill" only because people kept attacking. I still grin from my own humor, and it fell completely flat <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /></blockquote>

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