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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7036125" data-attributes="member: 42582">I couldn't disagree more. I think it's very clever design that deliberately exploits strong points in the system.Dark Sun is similar but opposite - much more than default 4e, it seems to involve pushing elements of the Heroic experience (from the fiction/story point of view) into what is, mechanically, Paragon tier (and likewise pushing the story of Paragon tier into Epic).It's a big issue in game design, though. And in GMing. The principles for setting a DC in 4e, or HeroQuest revised, are quite different for setting a DC in Burning Wheel or Moldvay Basic.Burning Wheel uses other devices than DC-setting to manage pacing; Moldvay Basic, on the other hand, doesn't have any real devices for managing pacing, which means that sometimes you can enter the dungeon and just have nothing interesting happen (the wandering monster dice all come up negative, you can't open any of the doors, and your thief dies before s/he can unlock the treasure chest).If you don't like the terminology of "subjective" vs "objective" DCs because you think it carries undue baggage, then think of it as "pacing driven" vs "infiction causation driven" DCs. Or "story now" vs "process sim" DCs.</blockquote>