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<blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5142385" data-attributes="member: 23240">What causes problem here is trying to satisfy several conflicting goals. Different game designs come from different decisions in how to prioritize them.Majority of people who play D&amp;D and similar games expect and require meaningful challenges. To be meaningful, they need to be reasonably balanced - not too easy and not too hard. This is impossible to fully reconcile with real advancement in character skill in the area where it matters. You either need to scale challenges with PC abilities, thus making the advancement an illusion, or let characters become more powerful than anything they face, destroying any challenge.Of course, one may argue that it is possible to challenge player, not character skills, to create moral dilemmas or otherwise engage PCs non-mechanically. It is surely possible and is, at least for me, at least equally fun. But to do it, you don't need a complicated mechanical system at all. When someone plays a game as crunchy as D&amp;D, he usually expects the numbers to matter.It is possible to have both real advancement and real challenge, but it requires the changes to be qualitative, not quantitative. You become more powerful not by increasing your numbers, but by learning how to do completely new things - and you are challenged by situations that require these new skills. The game really changes as you advance. But a game that does this stays fun for the whole run only for people who enjoy all the types of challenge that show up on the spectrum. For this reason I don't expect any of big publishers to use this kind of design in their product. Indies are our only hope.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="steenan, post: 5142385, member: 23240"] What causes problem here is trying to satisfy several conflicting goals. Different game designs come from different decisions in how to prioritize them. Majority of people who play D&D and similar games expect and require meaningful challenges. To be meaningful, they need to be reasonably balanced - not too easy and not too hard. This is impossible to fully reconcile with real advancement in character skill in the area where it matters. You either need to scale challenges with PC abilities, thus making the advancement an illusion, or let characters become more powerful than anything they face, destroying any challenge. Of course, one may argue that it is possible to challenge player, not character skills, to create moral dilemmas or otherwise engage PCs non-mechanically. It is surely possible and is, at least for me, at least equally fun. But to do it, you don't need a complicated mechanical system at all. When someone plays a game as crunchy as D&D, he usually expects the numbers to matter. It is possible to have both real advancement and real challenge, but it requires the changes to be qualitative, not quantitative. You become more powerful not by increasing your numbers, but by learning how to do completely new things - and you are challenged by situations that require these new skills. The game really changes as you advance. But a game that does this stays fun for the whole run only for people who enjoy all the types of challenge that show up on the spectrum. For this reason I don't expect any of big publishers to use this kind of design in their product. Indies are our only hope. [/QUOTE]

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