What the heck is "Unfun"?

[IanB]

Gaining levels?

I think I made it perfectly clear what I meant, what with the whole second sentence and all.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Ok, now that I am tired coming off of a 12 1/2 hour shift and growing even more tired of an interesting thread turning into a crapfest, I'm going.

Thank you to those with constructive comments, criticism, insights, etc. Shame on you villians who would bring my sweet, sweet thread to a screeching halt.

Ye know who ye are and I curse ye from the depths of me bowls. May your mommy chase you out of her basement and into the light of day where no darkness can exist and may all your D&D books turn grim, gritty and low magic with a focus on resource management.



Sundragon

 

[Glyfair]

OThere is not a single thread of evidence <snip>..., that there are gamers who want risk-free games.

So, this is what this whole argument was about.

I submit they exist, but they are pretty rare and not worth mentioning. The real issue here is that people have different things they are willing to risk.

To take an example I've been discussing a lot lately...

Death. As I pointed out in another thread, death is not a necessary element in D&D to provide risk to the player characters. A game could be structured so that the PCs will never die unless they choose to die. When they fight they are risking things other than their life.

However, what is also clear from those discussions is that there are a large number of D&D players who feel that isn't playing D&D "right." Without the risk of death there is no risk, in their opinion. They wouldn't want to play D&D if there was no risk of death.

I think that's what this whole discussion comes down to. It's not that the players don't want a "risk-free game" (not most of them, anyway). However, they don't want to risk what the OP (and others) feel they should be required to risk.

 

[gizmo33]

No, it's cool. I just hear so much about players who want risk-free games around here that just for once, I'd like to see some evidence that these players actually exist in any significant numbers. I'm starting to think that the mythical player who wants everything handed to him on a silver platter is the EN World equivalent of the bogeyman.

I think it's a spectrum, and one that lends itself fairly easily to exaggeration I guess. I am startled sometimes with things people say that seem to equate adversity with unfun. There's a glimmer of something that Sundragon is describing that I recognize. I think, however, that some of this is a misunderstanding. To be fair those misunderstanding though, sometimes people can be pretty evasive about their philosophy underlying a particular opinion.

Also, sometimes it's a matter of priorities - someone might not think any sort of adverisity is fun, but they don't realize they think that because how it is in their mind is that they just find other things more fun. I myself might not like Diminutive sized monsters, but have subconsciously been avoiding them and would take umbrage to someone else pointing this out without really spending time considering that perhaps the other person noticed something about my tendencies that I hadn't.

One of my players once told me he didn't want to keep track of rations because he was "an adventurer, not an accountant". Such a statement made on the internet might lead some folks to believe that he doesn't like adverisity in any form, but that can't be the case if he's been playing in my campaign for the last 15 years.

 

[GreatLemur]

Ok, now that I am tired coming off of a 12 1/2 hour shift and growing even more tired of an interesting thread turning into a crapfest, I'm going.

Thank you to those with constructive comments, criticism, insights, etc. Shame on you villians who would bring my sweet, sweet thread to a screeching halt.

Ye know who ye are and I curse ye from the depths of me bowls. May your mommy chase you out of her basement and into the light of day where no darkness can exist and may all your D&D books turn grim, gritty and low magic with a focus on resource management.

Right, now that was a good post.

 

[Gallo22]

So, this is what this whole argument was about.

I submit they exist, but they are pretty rare and not worth mentioning. The real issue here is that people have different things they are willing to risk.

To take an example I've been discussing a lot lately...

Death. As I pointed out in another thread, death is not a necessary element in D&D to provide risk to the player characters. A game could be structured so that the PCs will never die unless they choose to die. When they fight they are risking things other than their life.

However, what is also clear from those discussions is that there are a large number of D&D players who feel that isn't playing D&D "right." Without the risk of death there is no risk, in their opinion. They wouldn't want to play D&D if there was no risk of death.

I think that's what this whole discussion comes down to. It's not that the players don't want a "risk-free game" (not most of them, anyway). However, they don't want to risk what the OP (and others) feel they should be required to risk.

Very well said and I think this is exactly what many of us are getting at. I know that my group hates it when a DM "cheats" to keep a character alive just for the sake of keeping that character alive. FOR OUR GROUP....with out the risk of death or other bad things, the game is not fun to us...

 

[gizmo33]

The issue is insulting people who do exist through strawman arguments.

Aha, "strawman", gotcha!

The problem is not people in this thread inventing gaming habits and insulting them, it's ascribing invented gaming habits to people who dare to discuss aspects of the game that are more or less fun for what they add, and insulting the real people using the imaginary gaming habits.

So someone is calling someone else 5-headed? (using my analogy). I would think it was simply easier to prove that you don't have five heads, rather than demand that the person making the statement go and find a five headed person first. Because in the case that they prove such a person exists, they're *still* not talking about me and I could have made things a whole lot easier by establishing that.

IOW: Why ask for proof for the existence of something that you don't care about that doesn't have a bearing on the issue anyway? Asking for this kind of proof is relevant to the first part of your quoted statement above, which is the part you say isn't an issue.

 

[gizmo33]

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

No problem. Ironically I have always found the use of the word pedantic to be pedantic in itself. The inventor of that word was a genius.

 

[sidonunspa]

Unfun for me - save or die

I had a character once, we where hit with a curse in a temple of some kind (cant remember to what god now)... once we finished the adventure, and where on our way out of the temple we where asked to make saves...

I rolled a 1 and died on the spot... no idea why, nothing.. just dead

That was no fun.. you kill me in melee, or have a caster fireball me to death.. good! bring it on!

it ruined my night and like the next 5 games after that.

 

[Thanin]

Sundragon2012 I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you.

Sometimes you're not going to be amazing and badass in a fight. Sometimes you're useless in a combat. Sometimes you have to run to survive. Sometimes you lose. And the best adventures have just enough of all these to make the wins, the revenge, the drama and tension memorable and talked about by your friends for years/decades.