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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4516186" data-attributes="member: 42582">4e takes the game in a direction much closer to death flag/stakes style play (eg aspects of the skill challenge system, the metagame aspects of power use and their interaction with the saving throw and healing rules). It will be interesting to see whether it becomes/remains (choose one's preferred verb!) a popular RPG.I think that I've already mentioned that this (like GM fudging of dice) has nothing to do with death flag mechanics, because it is deprotagonising - wherease death flag mechanics take the control out of the hands of the GM and give it to the player.It is one of the weaknesses of 2nd ed AD&D, and also other games that describe themselves as "storytelling" games, that they make an implicit assumption that it is the GM's role to tell a story, and the players' role to go passively along. Railroading (or "illusionism" ie railroading with a cloak drawn over the rails) is in my view one of the worst ways to play an RPG.Hence the attractiveness, to me, of mechanics that hand control to the players.I don't know that I agree - until 4e I've never found D&D rulebooks to be very good at explaining, in simple metagame terms, what the play experience is meant to be like. The rules for death flag/conflict resolution/stakes games tend (in my experience) to be easier to read just because they are written in a more self-conscious fashion.But I've got no doubt that one might write a completely clear ruleset explaining how to use SoD.</blockquote>

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