NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ryryguy" data-source="post: 4708233" data-attributes="member: 64945">perfect storm of bad luckVery interesting... I think I can appreciate a some of the fun I'd have playing in a game where there was a lot of uncertainty and risk, where I felt like I had to stay on my toes at all times or risk catastrophe.  I have played in a few games like that.  However...I can't help but wonder how I would react to the above scenario as a player.  I'm pretty sure that I would not find it enjoyable.  Even assuming I did know and buy into the idea that this was possible from the outset, I don't think I'd say, "Wow, that was an amazing, perfect storm of bad luck!  What fun! I really feel like I am there, experiencing the game world in all its coherence and verisimilitude!"  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Please note, I'm not trying to say your game style is bad or that you and your group can't possibly be having fun.  I'm just trying to imagine putting myself in the shoes of a player in a game where this happened.  Have you actually had this sort of thing happen at your table, and if so, how do your players react?I remember reading something several years ago (sorry, no idea of the source), where a DM recounted a game session.  First, the group completed a long, dramatic arc successfully.  I think they may have lost a PC or two in the process, but they won out over great odds and achieved a victory that was important to them.  The group was estatic.  But, there were still a couple of hours left in the session.  So as they journeyed through the woods back to town, he rolled for a random encounter.  A wolf attacked, and in the ensuing combat there was a perfect storm of bad luck.  One of the PCs was killed by the wolf.According to the DM, the players immediately deflated, becoming quiet and obviously depressed.  He asked them why.  "She just died for nothing.  It seems pointless."Again - I'm not trying to say all groups would react this way.  Maybe the random wolf encounter was a bad choice for his group because they weren't expecting that style of play - they weren't bought into it ahead of time.  But the DM who wrote up this story clearly took a lesson from it, and it resonates with me. As a player, I don't want to win all the time and I expect to lose.  But I want it to matter.  I want to have a chance not to lose because of my efforts.  More than that, if I do end up losing, I want to have at least a little bit of choice regarding how and why I lose.  I don't want it to be because of mere randomness, even if it's the randomness built into a meticulously crafted, coherent and logical game world.If I'm dealt a zero-point bridge hand and the opponents have a laydown grand slam, I can laugh it off due to bad luck.  If my fantasy football team's entire starting lineup suffers season-ending injuries in the first week of the season, I might even get a perverse enjoyment out of such spectacular misfortune.  But when I play D&D or other RPGs, I'm looking for something else.  I'm not sure I even know exactly what it is.  Maybe it's just wanting to be challenged?  Like, on the flip side, if a perfect storm of good luck on the encounter tables led to the discovery of an abandoned starship packed with gold and the deed to a paradise planet - it'd be different, but I  don't think I'd actually enjoy that either.  Please note, by challenge I don't mean "always a level-appropriate" challenge.  Figuring out something is not "level-appropriate" and backing off could in itself be an enjoyable challenge.  Screwing up and stepping into the "non-level-appropriate" challenge might just open a new challenge of how to survive or to recover from getting my butt handed to me.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   I understand as well that we're talking about a continuum here, that even DMs who are very committed to a sandbox style are still generally going to have ways for players to figure out when they might be getting in over their heads and to escape when they inevitably do; and PC's are gonna die sometimes in most any style of game.  But the Shaman's comments were pretty striking to me as one of the purest expressions of the one end of the continuum.  In that pure form at least, I don't think it would be the game for me.</blockquote>

Verification