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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9791716" data-attributes="member: 6790260">What if we designed a game such that those two motives lead to the same outcomes? Designed it so that trying to keep your character alive (while, I assume, accomplishing their goals) is entertaining the audience--namely, the other players and the GM.It's quite doable. D&D just balks at actually, y'know, doing the testing-heavy game design labor required to do it.For your group, I certainly believe that. But conversely, if that were to be consistently the outcome, I'm fairly sure even your group would grow bored with it. Other groups have a lower tolerance for anticlimax. Indeed, I would say most players appreciate anticlimax as a sometimes food, in part because its presence is evidence that their choices really do matter and that they can (in a limited, local sense) "win" when they believe they shouldn't have. (And, likewise, being forced to retreat--which is something I support being included in a game's design, believe it or not!--is good because, again, it can show that their choices matter in the other direction, and that they can "lose" when they believe they shouldn't have.)The great majority of folks generally want decent-to-good pacing and satisfying conclusions. Anticlimax as a sometimes food can be a satisfying conclusion. Having it as a staple leaves a bad taste. And that, right there, is also a fact of life--and one no quantity of rules or design or style will ever alter.You don't see the experience of play as resembling the experience of cinema or story. That's fair. Unfortunately for you, most people do see at least some similarity between those experiences, and as a result, they want certain components, like pacing, rising and falling action, satisfying conclusions, and a perceptible (but not necessarily obvious) "arc" or "direction" for how things went.</blockquote>

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