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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8966438" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I don't think its a general thing. Like, its fine if you use 'Find & Remove Traps' in D&D and hey, you rolled low! Congrats, you disarmed it! But this is simply one very small increment of play, there's still a whole dungeon maze out there, and you just burned one turn of torches and got yourself a wandering monster check in return for getting past that trap. Had it gone off, you'd also have a dead thief (or a caster now short a valuable spell, etc.). We cannot judge these things in isolation, the design of an RPG is a thing entire. Since they are generally also 'unbounded' in a fictional sense, and mechanics are at the very least deployed in response to fiction, there's always the possibility of 'driving off the reservation' into a sort of scenario where a given game doesn't do this stuff very well. The other option being to just create a very niche game where the only options which can exist have been taken into account. This is definitely possible in things like journaling games and such, or things like Paranoia or Cthulhu Mythos games where there ain't no place Yog-Sothoth isn't coming for you...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8966438, member: 82106"] I don't think its a general thing. Like, its fine if you use 'Find & Remove Traps' in D&D and hey, you rolled low! Congrats, you disarmed it! But this is simply one very small increment of play, there's still a whole dungeon maze out there, and you just burned one turn of torches and got yourself a wandering monster check in return for getting past that trap. Had it gone off, you'd also have a dead thief (or a caster now short a valuable spell, etc.). We cannot judge these things in isolation, the design of an RPG is a thing entire. Since they are generally also 'unbounded' in a fictional sense, and mechanics are at the very least deployed in response to fiction, there's always the possibility of 'driving off the reservation' into a sort of scenario where a given game doesn't do this stuff very well. The other option being to just create a very niche game where the only options which can exist have been taken into account. This is definitely possible in things like journaling games and such, or things like Paranoia or Cthulhu Mythos games where there ain't no place Yog-Sothoth isn't coming for you... [/QUOTE]
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