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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9825510" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Was it "driven by design"?Or was the design driven by player preference?Because that seems to be the root of the disagreement here. You think that (somehow?) games made players think failures are bad and something to be avoided. I think that's the natural state of being for people--it feels bad to fail, that's pure human nature. It seems to me that what actually happened is, when 1e was the only game in town, you were forced to endure failure until you stopped caring about it. That's not an experience most folks are interested in. Now, it is an experience that a very meaningful chunk of players are interested in, despite being only a minority of players. Hence, I genuinely believe it should be supported--for exactly the same reason that I think 4e-like things should be supported, because a meaningful chunk of players, despite being a minority, value that experience. We can see from the success of games like Elden Ring that there is meaningful appetite for hardcore gaming experiences; I am not even slightly saying that you have to like Elden Ring or similar video games in order to want to play hardcore D&D stuff, simply saying that the fact that that game got such significant appeal proves that things well-crafted for a hardcore-leaning audience do actually sell, and thus need to be integrated into the whole of the experience.As I've said many times before, this is why I think D&D, as a system, needs "novice levels". They can be called any other name; I have no attachment to those specific words, just the concept behind them: "level 0" characters, "funnel" characters, whatever you want. The core point is that that allows for an official, well-defined, and most importantly well-constructed, set of rules for the kind of experience you and yours desire. You deserve that. That kind of experience has been part of D&D since before there was a thing called "D&D". This does, of course, have one wrinkle that I know you would prefer not to deal with: having to convince players to embrace such a campaign. You would, as you have said many times, prefer that your style of play be the innate default--highly lethal, no-holds-barred, grim-and-gritty, failure-prone, maximum swinginess, etc.--because that would spare you the effort of having to convince people that that's an enjoyable experience. I am not personally of the opinion that that is the best approach. I think every GM actually does need to sell their players on the thing they want to do. And, yes, the structure I'm proposing would mean that you do in fact need to sell your players on that experience, which may be challenging, because a lot of people are not going to respond well to a blunt explanation of what you're aiming for. I don't think sparing you that effort is a reasonable demand. I think you should have to sell your players on that--just as the GM should have to sell their players on ultra-high-magic Eberron, or on the chitin-and-sandal extremity of Dark Sun, or the pervasive horror of Ravenloft (when it's done well)--or even the gritty realpolitik of Greyhawk....or the hero-to-superhero experience of the Points of Light setting in 4e.I don't think any of us merit special treatment in that regard. Every one of us GMs should have to sell our players on our vision. Nobody gets a free pass. Not you, not me. Otherwise, what we'd actually be saying is, "I want to have my players as a captive audience who don't get to decide whether they accept what I want to do as GM." And that sounds...pretty bad.</blockquote>

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