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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6342601" data-attributes="member: 18">Indeed, it's a terrible indicator, but I think that discussion has been had.I think your discussion of how "hard" your game, is and how "skilled" your players are is distracting you from the actual topics you set out to discuss. The thing is, it's subjective/relative how skilled your players are, and how hard your games are. Very subjective. Whether there even is such a thing as player "skill", rather than merely knowing DMs or genre conventions or the like in RPGs is a matter of debate - and probably should be in another thread.So perhaps we could move away from that?What we can say is, if your players are having a good time, and enjoy the tension that feel, feel like they are working hard, and enjoy that, and so on, then you're DMing them well.Equally, if you took another group, and just TPK'd them repeatedly, and they had no fun, we could say you were DMing those guys really badly.It's all relative. Difficulty is certainly relative, and it doesn't matter if "most" groups would steamroller what you're putting out or get steamrollered by it, it matters how the group you're actually DM'ing for reacts.But you asked about the tension between "interesting decisions" - perhaps better phrased as "meaningful decisions" or "decisions with consequences" and "Wish Fulfillment", which is perhaps better phrased as "emotionally meaningful success". I think one issue that the more you lean towards aspects like puzzle-solving, resource management, strategy and tactics and so on, which are inevitably going to get pretty metagame-y, the harder it becomes to stay in a strong role-playing, in-character mode. I've particularly seen some of the sort of "fiddly word puzzle"-type stuff push players completely away from their PCs and into an entirely different mode. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's definitely a thing. Whereas the stuff attributed towards the latter state, whatever we're calling it, all tends to support staying in-character.There's also the simple matter of whether you want the game to be dramatic or you want it to be quiet. I mean, you associate "enemies destroyed spectacularly" with the "emotionally meaningful success" mode, but I'd associate it more with the "dramatic" mode. For example, 4E tends to offer strong "meaningful decisions" play in combat, but when a major badguy dies, I'm probably going to make his death spectacular, rather than having him merely slump to the floor or whatever - but that it no way detracts from any "meaningful decisions" made that lead to his death, nor does it counter-indicate them.Equally, I could have an entirely DM-driven game, where I basically give the victory to the PCs, but where their victory, in the end, is entirely pyhrric, and their enemies don't die spectacularly. Yet that would seem to align away from the "meaningful decisions" mode, despite also aligning away from "emotionally meaningful success".I think the challenge for a DM is recognising what players want, how they want to play and so on, and sometimes categorization can help, but I'm not sure this categorization is necessarily helpful in that task. I feel more like Pulpisher was intent on catergorizing for the purpose of excoriation than to be helpful.Perhaps a better breakdown would be to consider how much players like certain elements, like resource management, puzzles, and so on, and how they like to succeed (because I feel like a game where the players rarely succeed at all is probably not a very fun or sustainable game - note: having a bunch of PCs die in a "PC funnel" or the like isn't the same as not succeeding, imo). I know that in my group, we don't have many lovers of static puzzles, but equally not all the players enjoy NPCs saying that they're cool, and are far more interested in whether they've actually changed the gameworld for the better. There are so many different things to measure. Hmmmm.One thing my group can't live without, though, is NPCs with personality who oppose them. Put them up against a faceless force and they'll be slumped with boredom before the end of the session. Throw a couple of named NPCs who are kind of dicks at them, and they'll be like a dog with a bone. No idea how to categorize that.EDIT - You say it's important to you that your players cause their PCs to adapt and survive and so on - I think that's true for most good DMs. On the flip side, a good DM must adapt to the players he's playing with to give them a challenge that entertains and engages the group he is with, rather than merely defeating them and then being smug about it (not that you are, but I've seen it happen). If he can't, he's a failure, at least temporarily (I've failed before - but you learn and adapt).</blockquote>

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