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<blockquote data-quote="Scribble" data-source="post: 4508108" data-attributes="member: 23977">It's not just about death. It's about managing the level of randomness, and putting more focus on the player's choices, and ability to play.Take a game like poker. Poker is based on a random hand of cards being dealt to each player. A good poker player, can then look at his hand, and get a rough idea of the percentage chance of it being a &quot;good&quot; hand based on what cards they are. He then decides whether to continue betting, knowing when to hold em, and when to fold em... A D&amp;D player can do a similar trick with his PC. He can look at his stats, current HP, powers etc, and know roughly what his chances of survival are, with a level of randomness based on dice rolls.The poker player is pitting his ability to play the game vrs his opponents. The D&amp;D player is doing a similar thing. he's pitting his ability to play against teh challenges the DM tosses at him.A good poker player uses his knowledge of the game/cards/math/opponents to his advantage. A good D&amp;D &quot;player&quot; does the same. He knows his character, his abilities, his teammates. Even if he &quot;looses&quot; he might be a bit upset, but overall it's a challange to do better. Save or Die would be akin to adding a card into the poker deck that says &quot;fold now.&quot; While it might be interesting for a bit, overall it doesn't really add to the player's invlvement of the game. There's nothing the player can really do to account for it, aside from hope he doesn't get dealt the card. Even if he's got all his math down, knows all the strategies in the world, and could be considered the &quot;best&quot; poker player, drawing the fold now card invalidates all that. Blam... sucker!Since there isn't a way to really compensate for it, it just kind of sits there as a thing the player just hopes doesn't happen and the player feels kind of cheated when it does. All that time and energy spent becoming a better player is pointless.I'd be wiling to bet that the majority of gamers out there prefer the game to challenge their ability to play it, and not just determine their level of luck...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Scribble, post: 4508108, member: 23977"] It's not just about death. It's about managing the level of randomness, and putting more focus on the player's choices, and ability to play. Take a game like poker. Poker is based on a random hand of cards being dealt to each player. A good poker player, can then look at his hand, and get a rough idea of the percentage chance of it being a "good" hand based on what cards they are. He then decides whether to continue betting, knowing when to hold em, and when to fold em... A D&D player can do a similar trick with his PC. He can look at his stats, current HP, powers etc, and know roughly what his chances of survival are, with a level of randomness based on dice rolls. The poker player is pitting his ability to play the game vrs his opponents. The D&D player is doing a similar thing. he's pitting his ability to play against teh challenges the DM tosses at him. A good poker player uses his knowledge of the game/cards/math/opponents to his advantage. A good D&D "player" does the same. He knows his character, his abilities, his teammates. Even if he "looses" he might be a bit upset, but overall it's a challange to do better. Save or Die would be akin to adding a card into the poker deck that says "fold now." While it might be interesting for a bit, overall it doesn't really add to the player's invlvement of the game. There's nothing the player can really do to account for it, aside from hope he doesn't get dealt the card. Even if he's got all his math down, knows all the strategies in the world, and could be considered the "best" poker player, drawing the fold now card invalidates all that. Blam... sucker! Since there isn't a way to really compensate for it, it just kind of sits there as a thing the player just hopes doesn't happen and the player feels kind of cheated when it does. All that time and energy spent becoming a better player is pointless. I'd be wiling to bet that the majority of gamers out there prefer the game to challenge their ability to play it, and not just determine their level of luck... [/QUOTE]

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