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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4511472" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, to the extent that this is true, there is no loss for those play groups who prefer the game to consist of encounters rather than exploration. 4e is clearly aimed at such groups.I tend to think that it is a change (not a loss) based upon the assumption that the players prefer encounters to exploration. If you are a player for whom this assumption does not hold, you may not like 4e.This is a huge part of 4e. It's just that 4e locates this decision-making within the context of an encounter, rather than as part of the prelude to the encounter (the element of play that the 4e rulebooks call "exploration").In short, 4e's shift of the locus of play from exploration to encounter (the degree of this shift I think may be highly variable from group to group - most 3E play that I'm aware of, for example, seems to focus on the encounter, and hence to find SoD mechanics problematic) does not alter the balance of player choice versus dice rolling in any obvious fashion.I'm not sure what the criteria are for "inherently problematical". The problem with SoD is that it doesn't work well in a game which takes the locus of play to be the encounter rather than exploration. This is what most 3E play defaults to, as far as I can tell (and is the focus of play in the 3E rulebooks) - for example, compare any WoTC module to a classic module like C2 or the S series, and you can see the increased emphasis on encounters over exploration. 4e is quite explicit in the rulebooks that play is primarily about (combat and non-combat) encounters.Given this playstyle, which is now - and probably has been for 1 or 2 decades - the default playstyle for D&D - SoD is a bad tool. This has nothing to do with whether or not player choices should matter. It has everything to do with whether players want to make those choices in the context of encounters, or in the context of exploration.So is it just a matter of playstyle preference?Is this "inherently problematical" damage? Or just playstyle-relative damage? Removing SoD prevents a certain sort of play that some players (especially a certain sub-set of 1st-ed AD&D players) enjoy. It enhances a different sort of play. This is largely zero-sum, and WoTC have taken a punt on where the majority of their customers' preferences lie.If your contention is, though, that there is something inherently unskilled about GMing or playing in a death flag game, I think that's a little uncalled for.Ah. Your contention is the RPGs with death flag mechanics are not actually games. Well, perhaps on one (somewhat narrow) meaning of that word they are not - Ron Edwards did distinguish "gamism" as one approach to RPGing, and death flag mechanics would be more often associated either with narrativist or with high-concept/genre simulationist play. But as Wittgenstein famously pointed out in the Philosophical Investigations not all games involve competition or winning and losing in the way you seem to be assuming. In this broader sense I don't see why death-flag RPGing should not qualify as gaming.</blockquote>

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