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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7900583" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>There can be lots of reasons, and understand in most cases I'm using "Big Red Button" figuratively for something which one should obviously not mess with unless one has fully understood the consequences of messing with it. Examples:</p><p></p><p>Lovecraftian Artifacts: There are often good reasons for having a powerful magical Foozle as a plot device which you don't want the players to easily weaponize as a general purpose problem solving tool. Further, there is often good reasons for wanting to make magic feel Numinous and Dangerous and not just simply technology. For example, while you could have magical TV's in your setting that worked using Crystal Ball technology and were an important part of the culture, you'd probably not want to do that in settings that weren't satirical or ironic. For most fantasy settings, you want players to risk madness reading The Book of Vile Lore, or for the Foozle of Doom to not be something that the party treats as casually as a TV remote control or even a .45 caliber revolver. Invariably though, players will see an obviously Lovecraftian artifact of horror and dread and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad."</p><p></p><p>Telegraphed Traps and Encounters: If you have a setting where it absolutely makes sense that there would be lethal death traps for in game reasons, then for out of game reasons it often makes a lot of sense that the presence of the trap is telegraphed by various clues so that the players don't unadvisedly take the Bunny of Death casually before interacting with it - "My god man, look at the bones!" But invariably the players will see the big sleeping dragon or the caged demon and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad." What's even worse, is that in my homebrew setting there is an actual established system for classifying how dangerous a magical effect is and of what type it is, and so quite often there will be an arcane rune equivalent to the Biohazard or Radiation warning and saying something like, "Do not interact with this thing without proper precautions because it can potentially destroy an entire city/continent/all life on the planet". And the players will actually read that and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad. Let's see what it does." </p><p></p><p>There is a theory among some of the oldbies that I play with that the problem lies with younger players whose primary experience is video games, where you can always restore to a save point if pushing the Big Red Button goes wrong, and hense the younger players need to be reminded that the game is played in Hardcore Mode.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7900583, member: 4937"] There can be lots of reasons, and understand in most cases I'm using "Big Red Button" figuratively for something which one should obviously not mess with unless one has fully understood the consequences of messing with it. Examples: Lovecraftian Artifacts: There are often good reasons for having a powerful magical Foozle as a plot device which you don't want the players to easily weaponize as a general purpose problem solving tool. Further, there is often good reasons for wanting to make magic feel Numinous and Dangerous and not just simply technology. For example, while you could have magical TV's in your setting that worked using Crystal Ball technology and were an important part of the culture, you'd probably not want to do that in settings that weren't satirical or ironic. For most fantasy settings, you want players to risk madness reading The Book of Vile Lore, or for the Foozle of Doom to not be something that the party treats as casually as a TV remote control or even a .45 caliber revolver. Invariably though, players will see an obviously Lovecraftian artifact of horror and dread and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad." Telegraphed Traps and Encounters: If you have a setting where it absolutely makes sense that there would be lethal death traps for in game reasons, then for out of game reasons it often makes a lot of sense that the presence of the trap is telegraphed by various clues so that the players don't unadvisedly take the Bunny of Death casually before interacting with it - "My god man, look at the bones!" But invariably the players will see the big sleeping dragon or the caged demon and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad." What's even worse, is that in my homebrew setting there is an actual established system for classifying how dangerous a magical effect is and of what type it is, and so quite often there will be an arcane rune equivalent to the Biohazard or Radiation warning and saying something like, "Do not interact with this thing without proper precautions because it can potentially destroy an entire city/continent/all life on the planet". And the players will actually read that and go, "Yeah, it can't be that bad. Let's see what it does." There is a theory among some of the oldbies that I play with that the problem lies with younger players whose primary experience is video games, where you can always restore to a save point if pushing the Big Red Button goes wrong, and hense the younger players need to be reminded that the game is played in Hardcore Mode. [/QUOTE]
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