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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7769129" data-attributes="member: 29398">Agreed in all respects.As for the article itself, there's a few bits I found quite relevant.  One is this:Then you said (broken up to include my replies):We've already seen in other threads that at least in D&D the level and degree of 'unpleasant' has clearly declined over the editions, so while saying 'nothing unpleasant happens' goes too far it's certainly fair to say 'there's much less potential for unpleasant to happen, leading to it happening much less often'.Well, not quite: in fact 4e and 5e, at least in the published adventures, are combat-designed so that terrific happens all the time - which is just as bad!  Most of the set-piece combats (particularly in 4e adventures, which did these really well) are set up such that the enemy gets the jump on the party for the first round or two, then the party roars back to victory.  Problem is, when everything's special then nothing is...meaing it can all tend to end up looking the same if the DM isn't careful.Again taken too far, but the concept of "treasure parcels" (4e) and "wealth by level" (3e) do smack of a degree of prepackaged-ness not really present in earlier versions.I changed the list order so as to batch these three together, as they're all variants on the same theme along with 'nothing unpleasant happens' above.  In some games built around fail-forward a true flat-no failure is quite difficult to achieve, be it on something basic (climb a wall) or something grand (an entire mission) in part because the game - for lack of a better term - wants you to succeed.  This to me is a real difference from what we'd call old school games that didn't give a hoot whether you succeeded or not and just went on their way regardless.As for the rest, see my comments re 'nothing unpleasant happens', they all apply here too.This is what I mean by a flat-no failure, and it's intended to be frustrating - that's the point!  If you were frustrated, that means it worked as intended. <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=":)" />So it's a mission fail - so what?  Go back to town, recruit a better thief or find a device of secret door detection, and try again.  Or find a different mission. <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=":)" />The frustration and aggravation in trying to find the way forward makes it that much sweeter if and when you finally succeed.  I think this is often overlooked.It is, and is also another form of railroading.  As a player I don't like it when a DM does this, and I try not to do it as DM.From these statements no.  But I think CaW v CaS is one distinction, albeit a bit fuzzy, that can be made between old and new at least within the D&D realm; not just in design but in player/DM preference.  Look at the discussions in here for example, whenever this topic comes up: the CaW supporters are generally those who started with (and maybe never left) 0e-1e-2e while the CaS supporters are generally those who either started more recently or whose main focus of play has become 4e-5e.</blockquote>

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