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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6342640" data-attributes="member: 22779">But that only applies if the challenge is the same every time.  yes, you can complete that mission every time now.  Cool.  How many times did you fail before that became true?  And, can you complete every single mission every single time?  If I gave you a completely new mission, using the same game (I assume it has a level editor, most FpS game do), would you compete it the first time?  Unlikely, I think.Which means that basically, you are playing wish fulfilment games.  You are gearing the difficulty to the players, with an eye on the idea that they will always succeed, just like you always succeed in your Ghost Recon mission.  There are no actual decision points to be made.  Do the same thing every time, and you succeed.  Once your players learn your "rules" they succeed every time.  They don't have any real decision points - just learn which levers you want pulled and they succeed.Decision point gaming means that decisions actually matter.  It's not about reading the DM or always being able to make the "right" choice.  It's about every single choice actually having consequences beyond a binary succeed/fail.  In Interesting Decisions play, a decision may advance you towards a goal, or may impede you from achieving that goal but it is up to the players, ultimately, as to whether or not they will achieve success.  Success in Interesting Decisions play cannot ever be guaranteed.  As soon as success is guaranteed, then it's Wish Fulfilment play because success is a foregone conclusion.  You WILL succeed in Wish Fulfilment play.  The thing is, you are conflating play difficulty with the idea of Interesting Decisions.  In your view, they are synonymous.  A difficult game will always be one with Interesting Decisions.  But, your examples disprove your point.  In your examples, difficult play actually has no Interesting Decisions since there are only single paths to the goal and all other paths lead to complete failure.  Since your games don't end in complete failure they can't actually have any Interesting Decisions.  If your games always end in success, then they are Wish Fulfilment by definition.  That it takes a while to get there means that you hide the illusion well, but the fact that you ALWAYS get there means that you don't actually have an Interesting Decisions game because it is virtually impossible that a group could always make the right decision every single time.  It would be like someone picking up Ghost Recon and succeeding in every single mission on the first try.  It's possible, but not very likely.</blockquote>

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