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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5158127" data-attributes="member: 3820">I believe the mental process of deciding to play a game is a matter of balancing mental scales. If the pros outweigh the cons, then the game seems like it'll be worth it. I can't fault a group for deciding that a particular con weighs particularly heavy in the scales, however, and wondering how to lighten its load. It's kind of like buying a house, really; you accepted that house as a whole when you closed the deal, but that doesn't mean you can't put in some new window treatments if you get tired of the old ones. I should clarify that I don't think that including "miss a turn" mechanics are as inherently bad as <a href="http://www.justinachilli.com/blog/2010/3/4/youll-do-nothing-and-like-it.html" target="_blank">Justin decrees</a>. (He also admits it's a contentious issue.) But I'm not convinced that they are sufficiently good game design that they deserve a spot as a sacred cow, and that most RPGs should feature them. So I think they're easily omitted without doing the hobby a grievous wrong.  I can only go on personal experience here. I've watched friends and co-workers agree to play on a weekday after work, get knocked out by a hold person or similar thing, and count that as one of the day's many frustrations rather than a refreshing escape. It's not enjoyable for anyone at the table to watch a friend have no fun. I'm all for individual groups deciding not to do that if it suits them better. (It also sucks when fluky die rolls eat up a player's fun, but that's an even harder thing to fix. If there are dice in any form, they will be fluky. Little bastards.)Slight ramble here, please pardon.One of the first times I realized I was really developing games for a living was when it started hitting me hard every time I heard about someone giving up on RPGs. When I'd hear a story about how someone tried an RPG once, but the people they played with were jerks, or they didn't have any fun, and that was it. When the first impression was so bad we'd lost a potential gamer.And then I realized I had previously been enjoying this luxury when I was just running games, not actually trying to grow the hobby. I didn't have to appeal to anyone except people who already played games the way that I like to play games. I could just do what I liked, and worry about my own table. As a designer, I actually had to ask if my style would make things better for the customer base as a whole. (And there's a whole trenchcoats & katanas digression waiting to happen there...)The "tyranny of fun" argument seems, to me, to be rooted in a GM's concern for his own table. It doesn't find the omission of rust monsters a bad thing because it would be bad for the hobby as an overall whole (and he admits that WotC's approach is the reasonable one for them). It's about what's good for a group that, should it want to recruit new players, can get them pre-acclimatized to the house style, or the old ways, or whatever. Even if more players are turned away from RPGs as a whole, the ones that are left are the ones you'd want to game with. As a GM, your own group is your first priority. The "tyranny of fun" becomes an issue if it might impact your group, whether or not brings more people into the hobby and gets to healthier numbers. But I think "lose a turn" mechanics are the same way. If they impact the group, they're worth addressing. You no more owe it to other gaming groups who like them to keep using them than those other gaming groups owe it to you to stop using them.</blockquote>

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