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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8712167" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Bit of an aside here, but I think for most people who play for this challenge-focused type of experience, it’s not just combat that provides the challenge (otherwise, yeah, there are lots of board games that deliver that better). The entire dungeon or other adventure environment is part of the challenge. It’s not just tactical combat, it’s strategic planning, orienteering, resource management, risk assessment… the game is like a whole ecosystem of challenge, constantly pushing you to make tough decisions, which in turn reveal interesting things about the characters and leave everyone with an exciting, memorable story.It kinda sounds like the story is actually intrinsically valuable to you, then. Or… not exactly I guess, because if that was the case you could just read a novel. Clearly it’s the process of creating the story that you value, but like… you’re clearly not placing restrictions on yourself to make telling a story more challenging. There’s something else going on there that I’m struggling to describe.So, this gets at what I’ve been trying to say about deaths not really being random. To me, just about everything a PC does while adventuring is a deliberately risky action. And as a DM I strive to insure that’s the case, by telling the players the DCs and  consequences their characters could anticipate before expecting them to commit to rolling. PCs are constantly gambling with their lives, so to me, character death basically always feels like the result of a deliberately risky action. The only time it feels truly random and unfair are times when the player lacks the information or ability to make a deliberate decision, like the example someone posted a while back of their rogue dying because a behind-the-screen roll apparently told the DM they didn’t see the untelegraphed trap.</blockquote>

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