Continuation of the D&D brand (from a business perspective)

[Curious]

I know. I'm just saying that, if you were to try to reinstate the "downsides" of magic from earlier editions, it's more reasonable to do it logically based on the experience of the character rather than to just do a flat rate that has a chance of screwing everyone over.

Perfectly logical. I agree with everything you have said. Good show, sir.

[Noctemwolf]

Anyone mind if I throw in a comment?

On the whole teleport thing, I want to say that that's beauty of magic. If anything about it is a constant, it's that it's unpredictable. I do agree that being a high level wizard should mitigate the risk: But it shouldn't completely disappear. the entire game is based on random chance, in the end. And even a powerful wizard is still mortal, and we all screw up sometimes!
Although, even then you could split teleport into two spells; maybe they can't screw up the smaller one (One that would be like spinning in your cape and appearing across the room) But the bigger one could have a chance of failure (Like teleporting halfway around the world). Which could still be mitigated but not completely lost.
Randomly want to say I would replace the arbitrary death with a table of misfortunes. The table includes death, but also things like ending up in the wrong place, or a status condition, or some other thing like now you can only speak in Latin or that you leg and arm switched places. Silly little things like that.

In terms of a Business perspective?
From everything I'm seeing, I would say that the rules for another edition of DnD (If something like that happens) Would probably be best suited to be split into two styles of play. The main rulebook should be the 'softcore' game, allowing those new to the game or even those who don't want to play hardcore can play, and there be another part of the rulebook that implements the 'Hardcore' setting.
(OOOooohhh, game terminology! An 'Easy' Mode and a 'Hard mode'!! )
It would appeal to most of the fanbase IMO, including those who want to play with a larger factor of death and those who prefer a less 'wrong choice, you die' Style of game.

Getting something like that would take a lot of work, though. And most people are lazy and just want to make a quick buck. Meh, who knows?

[Kurald Galain]

Two important facts about the teleport spell.

(1) The chance of mishap depends on how well you know your destination. If you know it well, there is NO chance of mishap. This means that you do have a challenge: study or scry the place you're going to; or you use the spell to get back.

(2) There's another spell, Teleport Without Error, which is two levels higher but mitigates the risk.


Funny, isn't it? There are many stories about how in 3E teleport is so boring because it makes traveling too easy, and turns out that 2E had a pretty good answer to that but they took it out.

[Yora]

How about not continuing to talk about teleport? This discussion started to pages ago and is not really the issue here.

[Kurald Galain]

How about not continuing to talk about teleport? This discussion started to pages ago and is not really the issue here.

Well, it's a symptom of two important points. One, that different editions have had different design goals. And two, that people tend to misremember how editions other than their favorite one actually work.

Regarding continuation of the brand, this means two things. One, that a hypothetical 5E will have one design goal which could but probably won't match that of an earlier edition; it does not strike me as possible to combine their design goals entirely. And two, that when 5E surfaces, WOTC will probably start by loudly and repeatedly pointing out the perceived flaws of 4E, because degrading your previous edition helps you sell the current one. Of course, this is precisely what they did when 4E came out, so no surprises there. If they do it well, people will remember what you said about the flaws, rather than how they actually played.

[Fhaolan]

. . . What? I could understand your post, to a point, up until you said this. There are more rules involved in modern d&d than there were in older editions. Hardly improv acting.

EDIT: Gah, double post.

It's not the volume of rules that gives me that impression, mainly because to me just having lots of rules for an activity does not make it a 'game'. Driving a car has lots of rules and fiddly bits, but it's not a game.

No, to me a game is something with risk of failure, without any serious consequences to that failure. I admit this is not a common belief anymore. For example: Gambling is a game. I loose money if I fail, which isn't serious as I can make more. Playing 1st edition Traveller, where a character can die during chargen, the chargen itself is a game all on it's own because if I fail, I can start again. If my character dies in a RPG, the consequence is not serious because I can always make another. It's not like the character is an actual living person, or has any value beyond what I invest in it. And my investure is intrinsicly worthless to anyone except myself, and I choose not to take it seriously.

Addendum: I agree that the chance of failure as a set value regardless of skill or knowledge is not the best choice. Failure chances should probably scale with skill or circumstance. Not to remove the failure chance completely, but be able to mitigate it to some extent.

[Crow]

Well from a game-design perspective, I think there needs to be a chance of failure in pretty much everything a character does, even if it scales and gets less prone to happen as the character increases in experience. Some of the most abused (and complained about) options in D&D these days are based upon abusing situations where you have no chance of failure.

Contact Other Plane
1d2 Crusader
Chain-Gate Solars
Blade Cascade Ranger (before it got changed)

.....and many more!

[Quietus]

How about not continuing to talk about teleport? This discussion started to pages ago and is not really the issue here.

Teleport specifically is not the issue, correct - people have run with it. But the topic that spawned this situation, the risk/reward model, is an important thing to talk about, and as it's being put forward, Teleport is a good example of it. I don't like the 5% chance to die when doing Action X - but my issue with it has absolutely nothing to do with fairness, or anything else like that.

As a DM, I'm a storyteller. As a storyteller, any time players get access to an ability they want to use, and it has even a small chance of outright killing everyone, I cringe. I do think there should be some potential risk to "big magic" and other such things, to make players consider what they're doing. But if there's a 5% chance of death, as with Teleport, then I'm going to end up with players saying "I teleport the party back to the Dungeon of Ultimate Doom and General Nastiness", then rolling a 1. And all of a sudden, game over. The story I was telling is gone. The characters they'd been playing for the past six months, and were about to reach the climax of the campaign - gone. All of the effort I'd put into designing the most horrific and terrifying things I could think of for the next two or three sittings - gone.

In this case, this "hardcore mode", it may work well for more dungeon crawl, clear-and-loot games. But for someone trying to tell a story, it's supremely anticlimactic to have a player roll random failure and cut the story off like that. And to me, that presents as poor game design, because it defeats what I want out of the game.

[Kurald Galain]

But if there's a 5% chance of death, as with Teleport,

As has been pointed out, there isn't a 5% chance of death with Teleport.

[Erloas]

The most obvious thing to keep in mind is that it is simply not possible to make everyone happy. No matter what they do they can't make a "perfect" system because different players want mutually exclusive things.

One thing that could be done is having a base set of rules then a set of optional alternative rules that layer over top the base rules.
Battletech does this, they have piles of optional rules, and they say coming right out that they are optional and only use them if your group wants to. I don't think any are contradictory, its just that there are so many rules that if you used them all the game would bog down to being almost unplayable. They also have a simpler set of rules for large scale conflicts so you can play a game with a lot of units where it would be too much to keep track of for the normal rules.


And in Warhammer magic has a high chance of failure, but it is somewhat under the players control. If you only cast weaker spells there is no chance of failure, the more power you put at a spell the higher the chance of failure. And when there is a failure there are about half a dozen different options, only one of which is outright death. Of course there even having your wizard kill itself is only a part of what a player has and it doesn't guarantee a game over and even if it does you aren't out more then an hour or twos worth of game.


As for teleportation specifically there are a lot of possible changes to the spell that would not make it failure free and would not just be an instant TPK/Game Over. Put a recast time on powerful spells like that*, its too draining to cast twice in succession, so when you fail and are misplaced you can't just cast it again. The misplacement could be almost anywhere, including 30 ft away, just on the other side of the angry orcs and it could cause some sort of nausea or disorientation for some rounds after you materialize on the other side.
*To steal an idea from Warhammer have a sort of winds of magic where each school pulls from a different aspect of magic and casting too many or too powerful of spells from a school will leave that part of the caster/area drained for a while. Its a simple idea that could fix a lot of potential caster problems, including any possible recursive loops.

[Frozen_Feet]

All video game players agree that it's ''no fun and unfair'' to have a character they spent hours building just be 'gone'. So they don't make video games like that.

Yes, they do make that kinds of videogames. The best known genre is "roguelikes", manye of which incidentally harken back to roleplaying conventions from ages past.

In Angband, you have pretty good chance your character will enter an open room filled with Zephyr Hounds when going down stairs. Taking any step will result in your character nuked to death without any chance of reacting, unless you were crazy prepared and had just the right resistances. (And even then the risk exists.) And that's it for that character. You start again from level 1, no complaints, new dungeon.

A quite considerable number of the player base never manages to get even close to the endgame. (I've beaten one variant of Angband once... out of dozens variants and thousands of games I've played.)

There are even commercial version of the game. Diablo is best known, and in Hardcore mode, becomes exactly the sort of "die, go back to level 1 without crossing through a save point".

[Yora]

I actually think the rules aren't really that much important. Sure, a bad game won't sell as well as a good game that gets the same marketing, but I think the marketing actually makes a big difference.
I don't actually like the d20 systems. But I really like how many 3.5e and SW Saga books are written and how they look. So I don't play high level games and don't like 3.5e, but damn, I love Elder Evils. I can't use any of the crunch in the 8th level game I run or in a game that is not D&D, but there's a lot more between those covers than stat blocks. I love to read it and it makes me want to use things similar to those presented in the book. Which is the main reason I don't like 4E. The only interesting book I know about is the Manual of the Planes, which I really like a lot. But everything else appears as pushing miniatures on a map, which really doesn't interest me at all.

[eepop]

It's not like the character [...] has any value beyond what I invest in it.[...] I choose not to take it seriously.

I think this is the actual thing being argued here.

High Lethality gaming encourages you to not invest in your character, but at times the harsher consequences spur interesting choices.

Lower Lethality gaming encourages you to invest in your character more, thus allowing for deeper and complex relationships and interactions between the characters. But there is less room to really get into a bind and have to face those harder choices.


Honestly though, I think its all a false dichotomy that is in our heads because those are the only way editions have done it. I think its entirely possible for a game to exist that has non-instant-death consequences and still pose situations where you have to face hard choices.

The issue really is that any penalty other than death that 3.5 would leverage upon you can be undone in the course of 6 seconds by anyone that could cast Teleport in the first place. If there was a way for a consequence like "You are off target" or "You teleport too high off the ground, your leg is broken" that actually stuck with the character for a significant period of time, I think there is a level of danger that most people could be happy with.

Few people really want things so hardcore that you roll a dice at the beginning of each session to tell if you died in your sleep. And few people want things so softcore that their characters are completely invulnerable. Framing each other as such only serves to breed resentment, and does nothing to actually find where the common ground is that could please both parties.

[kyoryu]

And few people want things so softcore that their characters are completely invulnerable.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I've seen a lot of posts that say that characters should only permanently die if the player chooses for them to die. As far as not tolerating "loss," I've seen posts that say that characters should get exp even for sessions the player doesn't attend, so that everybody advances at the same rate.

And the "no death" mentality isn't really from video games - it goes back to DragonLance, which had DM asides on how to bring characters back if they "died."

[Crow]

A lot of the problem with the Teleport example that I seem to be hearing is with players that die while casually using teleport to get somewhere, ala 3.5 style. Which leads more to personal flavor preference than game design preference. Specifically, some people like 'easy magic' or *shudder* 'magitech', while others prefer dangerous, mysterious magic.

If there is a chance to die while doing it, should it maybe not be used so casually? To me, casual use of something that can kill you, and finally does, is mostly the player's own fault.

[Knaight]

I'm not sure I agree with that. I've seen a lot of posts that say that characters should only permanently die if the player chooses for them to die. As far as not tolerating "loss," I've seen posts that say that characters should get exp even for sessions the player doesn't attend, so that everybody advances at the same rate.

Death and loss are not the same concept. A character who never permanently dies in a story can still permanently fail at their goals, permanently lose people and things important to them, permanently change for the worse, so on and so forth. As for loss toleration as relates to experience, mechanical experience is only relevant if you actually care about levels as something to achieve. I'm of the opinion that characters should be kept near the same level and such, whether by always giving experience or some other matter, simply because levels are only really relevant to me when the characters start drifting apart and the system starts getting irritating. Not getting experience and falling behind in levels isn't a matter of loss, its a matter of nuisance for everyone involved.

Its really a matter of what people care about more than anything else. There's the notion of challenging the player as they use the character as a piece to overcome challenges, which is, more than anything else, the fundamental old school doctrine. Under this, stuff like treasure and experience are earned, important things, and someone getting those without being at the session doesn't make sense. In short, the value of what is gained is based entirely on the difficulty of gaining it.

There is also a notion of playing characters, using them as story devices, so on and so forth, which is more modern. Overcoming challenges is largely irrelevant in this, its more a matter of collaboratively building a story, and enjoying the process of creation. The very concept of rewards for overcoming challenges is an absurd one under this model, and the need for challenges at the player level regarding something like risk of character death is obviated. More than that, a system that actively tries to kill characters by design is a hindrance. If a group of people are working together to construct, for instance, a theatre set, worn down tools that don't always work really don't add anything to the value of the building process. They are a nuisance.

The wall of text aside, everything comes down to what people want out of a game. The views addressed (which are by no means comprehensive), come to:

• I want to take something valuable, but only if I am capable enough to get it.
• I want to be involved in the process of creating something of value, and that process is its own reward.

Of course, this isn't a binary either or decision. Its a matter of the extent to which both of these are important to the individual.

[Erloas]

High Lethality gaming encourages you to not invest in your character, but at times the harsher consequences spur interesting choices.

Lower Lethality gaming encourages you to invest in your character more, thus allowing for deeper and complex relationships and interactions between the characters. But there is less room to really get into a bind and have to face those harder choices.

While true, it also seems somewhat ironic to me considering the disdain you hear from a lot of TT RGPers compared to C RPGers, especially the more hard core ones. Because a lot of that has to do with not having any investment into characters in a computer game.
Its also ironic in that the more likely you are to die and the less you invest in the character, the less the death means. When you expect a character to die and it does then you've lost nothing and it really doesn't mean anything. However a character that you've heavily invested in would bring a greater sense of loss at loosing something that is only part of the character, such as a legendary sword or trinket they had to work had to get.

And to reference it back to computer games, its kind of like EVE. Which is a very unforgiving game with a harsh death penalty. The players have adopted the saying of "don't fly what you can't afford to loose" which means they don't actually risk anything of value the majority of the time. Even with a harsh death penalty most players probably don't risk more then 10-20% of their assets at any time, so the only people really at risk are the ones that haven't learned the first lesson of EVE or the ones that don't really care.

[Kurald Galain]

Lower Lethality gaming encourages you to invest in your character more, thus allowing for deeper and complex relationships and interactions between the characters. But there is less room to really get into a bind and have to face those harder choices.

On the other hand, No Lethality may also discourage you to invest in your character, because it makes many character decisions meaningless. This described in the 2E DMG as "it doesn't matter what I do because I'm going to win anyway", in the list of examples of bad DM'ing.

[Knaight]

On the other hand, No Lethality may also discourage you to invest in your character, because it makes many character decisions meaningless. This described in the 2E DMG as "it doesn't matter what I do because I'm going to win anyway", in the list of examples of bad DM'ing.

That presupposes that the player's goals are the same as the character's.

[The Glyphstone]

On the other hand, No Lethality may also discourage you to invest in your character, because it makes many character decisions meaningless. This described in the 2E DMG as "it doesn't matter what I do because I'm going to win anyway", in the list of examples of bad DM'ing.

No lethality doesn't necessarily mean no failures, though. To shift genres, I'm thinking of Toon here - though I've never played it, I understand character death is explicitly forbidden and impossible, no matter how comedically horrific the injuries are. Has anyone played a game of Toon and be able to vouch for/against people becoming invested in their characters?

The D&D analogy might be building potential for plot failure into the campaign - the players don't stop the ritual, or can't save the princess/city/kingdom. It takes a really skilled DM to build a game that in-depth, but if they can, failure isn't necessarily the end of things. I've played in a game much like that quote, and it was indeed awful, because we knew the DM wouldn't let us fail at anything until he reached the end of the module.

[Kurald Galain]

No lethality doesn't necessarily mean no failures, though.

Correct, which is why I said "may discourage" rather than "will discourage".

On the other hand, I have played Toon, and in my experience it doesn't make people invested in their characters. Arguably, this is not because of the lack-of-death, but because the whole point of Toon is that the entire universe is silly.

[The Glyphstone]

Correct, which is why I said "may discourage" rather than "will discourage".

On the other hand, I have played Toon, and in my experience it doesn't make people invested in their characters. Arguably, this is not because of the lack-of-death, but because the whole point of Toon is that the entire universe is silly.

True - maybe it was a bad example then.

[kyoryu]

That presupposes that the player's goals are the same as the character's.

No, it's about removal of player agency.

If the game is going to inexorably move towards its predestined conclusion, then what the players do has little or no impact. If success is guaranteed, then their decisions have no consequence, and at some point this becomes boring for (most) players. At that point, the only decision is in which way, exactly, you want to look awesome.

[stainboy]

That presupposes that the player's goals are the same as the character's.

D&D does presuppose that the player and the character share similar goals. There are games that don't, but it's such a different mode of play that I don't think D&D could expect players to learn it within one edition. And if they did, lots of people would hate it.

Note goals, not motivations. The player and the character can want the same thing for different reasons. My motivation is "there's a really creepy dude playing a succubus." My paladin's motivation is "uphold the Code at all costs." But the goal - kill the succubus - is the same.

[Hoddypeak]

First time posting here, but this topic brought up some ideas that I thought I'd share.

I thought it might be useful (much as Mr. Mearls has) to outline some of the elements of RPGs. Specifically, no rule set can fit all styles of play, and different editions of (A)D&D have fit different styles of play. Also, in outlining this, I came to an interesting conclusion in how I think any new edition should be designed (though whether the designers would share those ideas I seriously doubt).

There are several design spaces on which I see most RPG rule sets falling.

First, there's the level of sandbox game versus story game. D&D started as a pure sandbox game, and the idea of story RPGs came later on. But I'd say every version of D&D has moved more towards the story game side than its predecessor. However, other than 4e, I'd say all the editions of D&D have supported the sandbox style, and a sandbox game can usually support a story based style.

Second, I see a space of rules-light to rules-heavy. OD&D was definitely in the rules-light side, and again, each edition up to 3.5 moved towards rules-heavy. I don't know if I'd say 4e moved further along or just stayed still on this axis.

Third is the idea of class based games or skills based games. Here, D&D steadily progressed from a pure class based system to almost a pure, if incredibly complicated, skill based system with 3.5. Since 3e characters can actually take any class at any level, 3e classes are really nothing more than skill bundles. 4e moved back towards a class system.

Fourth, tactical miniatures combat versus quick mentally visualized combat. Each edition of D&D has been different here. I'd say the earlier versions balanced this, providing a system that could be used either way, with a bias away from quick mental combat. The most recent versions biased the other way, with 4e requiring miniatures.

Fifth is the idea of challenging the player versus challenging the character. Most of the above design choices influence this one, as does DMing style to a great degree. This is probably the place the designers need to make the biggest choice. Early D&D was definitely biased towards player challenge, and having no skills really requires that kind of play. Later D&D has had a challenge the character philosophy, where the main player challenge is in building a suitably tough character.

What's not included in any of the above is setting information. And that's what much of the argument here has been about. Because a good system for D&D would probably balance all of the above factors fairly well, and then the rest is in the setting.

So what's in the setting? High-lethality versus low-lethality games; weird, scary magic versus common, easy-to-use magic; and super-hero characters versus common joes. And that's my revelation on how I'd like to see the next edition designed.

With those things in mind, really, most editions of D&D made moderate changes compared to their predecessers in what I term the RPG rules design spaces above. Where TSR and WotC made bigger changes was often in the setting, by changing the danger level of spells, or the power progression of classes.

So, what I'd like to see in a new design, would be a basic rules set absent too much setting information. It would be a class-based system, perhaps again in two variants, a rules-light basic line and a rules-heavy advanced line. Both systems would have enough detail (lots of mundane items, item weights, carrying capacity) to support sandbox play, knowing that they can be dropped for people who don't want to use that. In at least the advanced line, there would be an optional skill system on top of the classes. Also, it would not require miniatures, and combat would return to a system where movement is separate from actions (so I stay between the orc and the mage is a valid tactic for the fighter).

However, my base D&D books would not include spells, or WotC would release different settings with completely different spell lists and descriptions. So in Greyhawk, a teleport spell could have a chance of failure, and lethality can be high, while in Eberon, a teleport spell can be extremely accurate.

my 2 cp

[stainboy]

Also, it would not require miniatures, and combat would return to a system where movement is separate from actions (so I stay between the orc and the mage is a valid tactic for the fighter).

Minis are another thing the game should support but not require. Minis are a rich man's hobby. There are a lot of college kids who can afford the core books, but if they think they need $200 in peripherals they won't buy anything. They don't need $200 (they can just use pennies for orcs or something) but they still need to buy more stuff from probably two different stores. They may not even own a big enough table. Most people in tiny apartments don't.

It's easy to miss this barrier to entry if you're a middle-class game developer who already has a card table and a drawer full of dice, battle mats, and markers.

Not requiring minis means minimizing small AoEs. Most abilities should hit one target, or hit everything in melee with you, or hit everything in a room. It also means limiting the role of very small movements in combat. (If the new thing has the 5' step it should just be a way to make grid movement less restrictive, not a way to avoid AoOs or fiddle with flanking.)

[bloodtide]

As has been pointed out, there isn't a 5% chance of death with Teleport.

No. In 2E you had a chance of being too high or low, even if the target location was very familiar to you. If you rolled a 1 or 2 on the 1d100 you were too high and if you rolled 100, you were too low. Always. And yes teleport with no error does not have this(except for plain hopping).

The point is that there was always risk to use teleport, or dozens of other spells.

Most modern DM's hate the random dice rolls...they want to tell a story. In other words, they make the game more like a novel(or a movie). To me this takes away a lot from the game. When you read a novel(watch a movie) you know the main characters can't die. So when they get into fights or even just harmful situations, you can just sit back and know nothing will happen.

Lots of games have 'characters vs nature', you have to cross a bridge over lava, for example. But if your playing with a storytelling DM, you need not even roll or anything. After all if you did roll bad and fell in the lava, you would know the DM would save you as "the DM is telling a story and does not want the story interrupted by random dice roll deaths.

As a hardcore Dm.....I like the surprise of random death, and random events period. I like it when something random happens and the story takes a life of it's own. And it's much more fun. Say the characters must get Prince Xon home to sign a treaty. In a storyteller game Xon is immortal and nothing will happen to him as it will ruin the DM's story. In a hardcore game, Xon is at risk. And it can be great fun for him to randomly die, with in a mile of home and then have the players scramble as what to do.


Back to Business: This was changed in 3e/4e because some of the designers had bad experiences. Bad things happen when you roll dice as dice are random. You just know some of them lost characters or items or plans or such. So when they made the rules, they made it as safe as possible. The typical over reaction. One guy falls onto a MLB field and now all MLB fields must have 6 foot fences.

I do like the idea of an Advanced D&D, hardcore type core rules. They could put it out with the Storytelling D&D rules and make everyone happy.

[Knaight]

Most modern DM's hate the random dice rolls...they want to tell a story. In other words, they make the game more like a novel(or a movie). To me this takes away a lot from the game. When you read a novel(watch a movie) you know the main characters can't die. So when they get into fights or even just harmful situations, you can just sit back and know nothing will happen.

Lots of games have 'characters vs nature', you have to cross a bridge over lava, for example. But if your playing with a storytelling DM, you need not even roll or anything. After all if you did roll bad and fell in the lava, you would know the DM would save you as "the DM is telling a story and does not want the story interrupted by random dice roll deaths.

Two things:
1) Protagonists die all the time, particularly in books that follow multiple sets, particularly where they have mutually exclusive goals. There are certain subgenres of larger genres where protagonists don't ever die, but they are the exception. Moreover, if fights, harmful situations, whatever exist, stuff that isn't dying can still happen.

2) If it is a matter of "the DM" telling a story, something has probably gone wrong. The pro narrative position isn't about the GM's story. If the GM views the story as "my story" instead of "our story", something has gone horribly wrong. Nobody really knows where the story will go, everyone's character arcs are fluid and change around parts of the story under other people's control. To take your example, it might be that there is a narrative in which one set of characters is trying to get Prince Xon home to sign a treaty. Sure, Prince Xon could make it and sign. Alternately, Prince Xon could die due to the foible of one of the PCs acting as a protector, shifting focus onto that character arc. Or perhaps the focus shifts to a second group of PCs in opposition, and the role of the first group, and the Prince, becomes showcasing the futility of peaceful resolution in the setting and the capability of pro-war factions. There's a lot that could happen, and dice likely do play a huge effect in what that is, directing the story along its possible splits.

However, in most cases, a major character dying to something like a teleportation error is dull, and having rules for that pointless - unless there is the creation of a false hope situation or similar, a venue for characterization based on the failure, whatever. Certainly the "we all die, plot is unresolved, game ends" option fits only a tiny handful of basic premises, and from the storytelling perspective building a theoretically semi-generic game around said tiny handful of premises is a bad move.

[stainboy]

Lots of games have 'characters vs nature', you have to cross a bridge over lava, for example. But if your playing with a storytelling DM, you need not even roll or anything. After all if you did roll bad and fell in the lava, you would know the DM would save you as "the DM is telling a story and does not want the story interrupted by random dice roll deaths.

I agree with you that "story" DMing has some problems and shouldn't be the only possible mode of play. I just don't like one-roll deaths.

For example, the classic poison needle trap, save vs poison or die. It's a solved problem. The solution is to constantly describe how you never touch anything with your hands, and if you're not playing a deathtrap dungeon that slows down the game needlessly. I've had to tell players more than once "there are no traps in this dungeon" just so they'd open the damn door before one of the other players fell asleep.

Meatgrinder games teach players to play super cautiously. In any other kind of game that's tedious, and it's often hard to unteach. The rules should let meatgrinder work but it shouldn't just be assumed.

About your lava bridge, if one failed roll dumps the party in lava, the solution is not to roll. Fly over it, teleport, stone shape a bridge, find another path, come back next level, whatever. Rolling is a reasonable choice if one bad roll has a character hanging from a ledge by his fingers, then everyone gets one turn worth of actions to try to save him, THEN the character has to roll again or fall in. (The probability of falling in doesn't even have to be lower. Suppose the one roll has a 25% chance of failure, and the two rolls each have 50%.)

[Eric Tolle]

WotC has tried to make D&D exactly like video games, especially the all important video game idea that your character is an immortal super hero.

I don't think the modern idea of limited death is based so much on video games, as fantasy novels and cinema. Modern players want their characters to be like Conan or Harry Dresdin, Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalkr. And Conan never died because he missed a perceive traps roll. Raiders of the Lost Ark did not go through Indiana, his brother Ohio, cousins Idaho, California, and Nebraska, just to get the gold idol in the beginning. Casino Royal did not involve Bond missing his jump to the crane, and continuing with several other agents who died over the course of the movie.

As the comic writer M'Oak put it when he explained why he doesn't play video games: "So I come up with my guy's history personality and motivations, and then first thing that happens I try to jump a crevasse, fail my roll, and die. That doesn't sound like fun to me.".

The hardcore style of gaming, where characters are short-lived abused puppets desperately trying to avoid the latest killer scenario of the DM, has never been the only style of gaming, and I can't help but think it's a good thing that it's no longer popular.

Would Chess still be fun if you could never loose a piece and just had to 'out maneuver' the other player?

You mean like Go? Is Go a "not fun" game? How about if every move in Chess required you to roll a D20- a "1" means you instantly lose, and have to start the game over from the beginning. Would that make Chess "more fun"?

The thing is, you may well say yes. I'm sure with a little bote of searching I can find fervent fans of "sudden death Chess". That doesn't mean that style of play is inherently superior, or that those who prefer conventional chutes are wrong. Different preferences call for different play styles, and a campaign that uses Runequest style fumble charts isn't inherently more fun than one that doesn't.

And I say death and other bad things add to the game. It's much more fun to risk character death..'for real'..then just pretend it is happening.

Well, it is for you, anyway. And there's players who feel that genital circumference tables and having a female player's character be raped by a hundred orcs "because she failed her Hide in Cover roll" adds a lot to D&D. But I'd say it's a mistake to assume that One's preferred play style is objectively the best for the majority of players.

If your character survives an adventure as the safety rules protected them, it's not much of an accomplishment. A 'hardcore' gamer who has a character survive knows it's a great accomplishment.

You know, this would be far more accurate and useful if you used terms such as "my" and "I" in your statements. Agree all, your fun is not everybody's fun, or really, all that many people's idea of fun.