NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8628416" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I say some kind of "fairness" is necessary for Score-and-Achievement play, because Scores that have no fairness at all aren't really "scores" anyone would care about, and Achievements that result from such things are seen as devalued. You've seen that viral tweet, "you cheated not only the game, but yourself." That requires some notion of "fairness" applied to both game and player.But "fairness" can mean different things. Many praise the games From Software makes because they are brutally hard, but have a certain fairness in their difficulty. The intent is that no death in games like Elden Ring should be, as Josh "Strife" Hayes puts it, "some bull$#!*," but instead should be clearly traceable to an objective, preventable error on the player's part. The Score is thus brutally enforced, because every error will cost you greatly (possibly killing your character outright). As a result, however, the Achievement is greatly sweetened (for the fans), for various reasons: a feeling of ownership (if the game is brutally hard, then victory is "earned," it "belongs" to the player), a feeling of "growth" or "advancement" tied to an objective and external standard rather than participation ribbons or guaranteed success, satisfaction from having actually reached the "gain" after "risking" your time and investment, etc.I think it's the "Dark Souls"/"Elden Ring" type of "fairness" that OSR Score-and-Achievement play seeks. It isn't "fair" in the sense of, say, a chess match where both sides have exactly the same resources and only differ based on who made the first move. Instead, it's "fair" in the sense that there is always a path to eventual victory, but finding that path may be excruciatingly difficult, and require a great deal of failure and loss before it can even be discovered, let alone walked.</blockquote>

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