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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 4510749" data-attributes="member: 18280">There are times within the context of the game that the players may choose to take a calculated risk.  If you remove the random element, you remove this ability.  For example, when facing a medusa, the players may choose to take a calculated risk and fight it in melee (either blindfolded, or trying to avoid meeting its gaze, both of which have attendant risks) or try to defeat it without actually engaging it (through a trap, subterfuge, turning another creature -- perhaps a blind one -- against it, etc.).  If meeting the creature in combat always meant death, then there would be no choice to be made.  Essentially, the element of decision would be rendered meaningless.Survival-guaranteed games do, by definition, preclude at least one form of risk.Of course, the survival-guaranteed meme has already been extended to "paralyzed in fight = unfun", so the x-guaranted meme can preclude other forms of risk as well, depending upon how far you take it.(It should be pointed out here that the "the x-guaranted meme" is present in most survival-not-guaranteed games, because the players recognize that they find certain things distasteful.  "No-rape-of-PCs-guaranteed" is pretty common, even when it is not stated explicitly.  Every group has to decide what consequences they are unwilling to accept; this does affect the risks characters are likely to take, however, because it precludes given consequences as being risked by actions in-game.)RC</blockquote>

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