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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6210176" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think this is worth teasing out because it's something Wyatt seems to have an issue wrapping his head around, too. The idea seems to be that this "dead end" is a point where the gameplay just stops and everyone stares at each other and they kind of shrug and say, "Well, I guess you get the widget, because otherwise we don't have an adventure for tonight, that was a silly thing to roll for."This seems to be the essence of the "trying to find the dungeon entrance" criticism, too. You could say that it's similar to "rolling Charisma checks to unearth the rumors that are really the plot hooks that take you on the adventure" kind of thing. And I think it needs to be said that this kind of thing totally can happen. But it only happens with a particular playstyle/adventure design rubrick. One that forgets that anything that you're rolling dice for has a failure state as well as a success state. The dice aren't just there to give you a pleasant aesthetic while you're bonking around through a narrative, they're there to determine success and failure. In D&D, the default failure state of pretty much everything is "you die." So, what happens if you don't find the dungeon entrance? Well, you die. In old school D&D, you'd probably die from wandering monsters while you're looking for the dungeon entrance as they slowly whittle away your HP over the course of several days. New D&D (late 3e, all of 4e) makes that pretty much an untenable failure state, since random encounters and gradual attrition are not really part of the game. So what's the failure state for failing to find the dungeon entrance in D&D post-2008? Well....umm....<img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m60y2stKnf1r64g7r.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It's totally cool if finding the dungeon entrance isn't really part of the challenge of the adventure. Unless the dungeon is crazy secret or hidden, it's probably not going to add much, and even if it IS, there's always some dude with a map! It doesn't NEED to be something with a possible failure state.But having that be part of the challenge means that the party risks their lives to find that dungeon, and that they might die in just trying to find it. So, in that respect, rolling Charisma checks to find the the lore that is really the plot hook is still kind of pointless. There's no real valid failure state (what, they're going to NOT find the plot hook? They're going to DIE finding the plothook? Pffft). But dying while trying to find the dungeon entrance or getting hit with random encounters while trying to puzzle out the clue or whatever are all valid possibilities, valid challenges for the game. It's worth noting that usually, the penalty for failing an interaction check is the same. If you're negotiating with angry aarakocra to find your way through the woods or trying to calm an angry wolf pack or something, and you fail, they'll probably just take out their hostility on your faces (which should either be immediately lethal, or contribute to the overall lethality of the adventure). If you're not charming, you die.I think there's room for more interesting failure states than death, too, but exploration and interaction by default in D&D are just as much about avoiding death as combat is, just at a slightly higher level. And forgetting that is what leads to things like rolling to find a dungeon entrance that you want them to find anyway. Kind of pointless to roll for something that you're not prepared to have fail.</blockquote>

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