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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7770160" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't understand the posited connection between &quot;danger&quot; and &quot;loss&quot;.In my Burning Wheel game, the principal PC (ie the one whose player was present for the most number of sessions) had a goal of redeeming his brother from demonic possession. Another PC had the goal of killing said brother out of revenge. At a particular crunch moment, the two characters were racing to the tower where the brother was resting, recovering from injury. The principal PC lost the race, and the other PC arrived there first and cut off the brother's head. No redemption possible after that!The principal PC didn't get what he wanted. The player of that PC &quot;lost&quot;. The danger to that PC was not high, though - the other PC wanted to kill the brother, not the principal PC.Only for a very narrow range of situations and scenarios does danger correlate to prospects of losing.But anyway, here's an example of a game that has a high degree of danger, in the sense that the wrong choice when confronted by physical or emotional threats could lead to bad things happening to your PC, and that also has a high degree of story: Burning Wheel.Here's an example of a game which has a low degree of danger in that sense, and a low degree of story: AD&amp;D played with PCs around 7th-9th level and up. (Those PCs will be very resilient and typically will have a lot of depth of magical resources to draw upon.)I'll let the OP tell me which one is old school and which one new school.In most RPGs that I play, there is no such thing as &quot;the adventure&quot;. So I'm not sure what it would mean to run &quot;the same adventure for several different groups&quot;.If a RPG is run as a railroad - ie player choices make no significant differences to what happens - then outcomes are predetermined. Are railroads &quot;new school&quot;?I think this article would be better if it made the point that playing DL c the mid-1980s is more likely to be a railroad than playing Keep on the Borderland c the early 1980s. Although I'm not sure that's a very novel point.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7770160, member: 42582"] I don't understand the posited connection between "danger" and "loss". In my Burning Wheel game, the principal PC (ie the one whose player was present for the most number of sessions) had a goal of redeeming his brother from demonic possession. Another PC had the goal of killing said brother out of revenge. At a particular crunch moment, the two characters were racing to the tower where the brother was resting, recovering from injury. The principal PC lost the race, and the other PC arrived there first and cut off the brother's head. No redemption possible after that! The principal PC didn't get what he wanted. The player of that PC "lost". The danger to that PC was not high, though - the other PC wanted to kill the brother, not the principal PC. Only for a [I]very narrow range[/I] of situations and scenarios does danger correlate to prospects of losing. But anyway, here's an example of a game that has a high degree of danger, in the sense that the wrong choice when confronted by physical or emotional threats could lead to bad things happening to your PC, and that also has a high degree of story: Burning Wheel. Here's an example of a game which has a low degree of danger in that sense, and a low degree of story: AD&D played with PCs around 7th-9th level and up. (Those PCs will be very resilient and typically will have a lot of depth of magical resources to draw upon.) I'll let the OP tell me which one is old school and which one new school. In most RPGs that I play, there is no such thing as "the adventure". So I'm not sure what it would mean to run "the same adventure for several different groups". If a RPG is run as a railroad - ie player choices make no significant differences to what happens - then outcomes are predetermined. Are railroads "new school"? I think this article would be better if it made the point that playing DL c the mid-1980s is more likely to be a railroad than playing Keep on the Borderland c the early 1980s. Although I'm not sure that's a very novel point. [/QUOTE]

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