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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7344924" data-attributes="member: 82106">Mmmm, I don't think 'win' is a word I would ever use in an RPG, except to describe something that happened in-character. IMHO success in an SC vs failure is more about who's contribution to the narrative is going to be established next. While the CHARACTERS succeed or fail, the players just play. They may be partisan and thus try to have their PCs win, but some sort of interesting story should continue, and character development should continue, etc. regardless.In fact even character advancement should continue regardless of failure or success, though perhaps in different pathways. In the game I run, HoML, my own self-authored hack of 4e, there isn't anything like XP or something you have to win to advance. Narratively various situations present the PCs with additional 'stuff' (boons in my lingo). Get a boon, advance a level. Now, maybe you aren't getting the finest possible loot by failing to defeat your opponents, but nothing in literature, legends, etc. actually suggests this is even a dominant trope. In fact I'd say fantasy material is FULL of instances of the Hero failing miserably, going out and acquiring some new magic or training or whatever, and coming back for more. Succeed maybe you win the fabled Zip Zap Sword, fail and you relentlessly track down the Greatest Swordsman and he teaches you some new moves, so you can go back and try again.Its interesting that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks in game structure and theory terms, and you guys come back at him with narrative concepts. The two simply don't equate. You aren't wrong by any means, but he's asking for hay for his horse and you're telling him you don't have a tire pump...Now this is SOMEWHAT more relevant, in that you are now both discussing things that are in the realm of game design. So, yes, the detailed mechanics of the two situations, at least in something like 4e D&D which you seem to be referring to mostly, are different. If we were talking about a different system, then the procedure might well be identical. Even with some mechanical difference they still summarize to pretty much the same thing, declare an intent, roll some dice, succeed or fail based on the results.Mmmm, I think since I started playing D&D in 1975 or so, things have evolved a good bit. I mean, you can play 5e in a way that is fairly evocative of early D&D (although there are some definite significant differences) but I don't think that equates to "most everyone plays the same old game." Just look at the vastly greater amount of character options that exist in 5e vs OD&D. Clearly there's a considerable difference. Nor have I seen an adventure published in recent years that is much like B1, B2, or to go back even further, Temple of the Frog. The reference 5e module, Phandelver, is a much different affair. It does contain elements that would probably be present in most OD&D games, but in a very different mix and with a radically different structure to the adventure. I think character development and RP are much more important in the agenda of most groups now vs in 1970's or 80's play. Those things existed then, and could be very significant, but there was a whole mode of play that really isn't much encountered now, unless you play with people who are consciously enacting 'OSR' games. Even then the thematics and genre concepts are often much more refined. I mean OD&D is mechanically not too different from 'Lamentations of the Flame Princess', but they are still radically different games thematically.</blockquote>

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