Hello. I've found this community incredibly insightful and interesting to read through for some time, especially juxtaposed with the D&D one. I have been trying to branch out and try/learn many RPGs, and have always been interested in TTG design beyond D&D. I'm writing this thread as the culmination of thoughts reading many different threads. The goal is to question if the theory here is generally true, and what that would mean.

As for my biases, I both like, and dislike things about D&D for a long time. However, I would say that the experience of playing with 5e with my group has been generally favorable, and led me to have a bit more tolerance for many of the things I didn't like about the system. Likewise, playing other systems has broadened my perspective as well. I suspect this community is a little overly harsh on D&D, and sometimes I see comments that indicate people might be missing the goal of that system, while I also often see the 5e community being blind to criticism, other systems, or defending anything wrong with the system with ,"just fix it yourself".

I've noticed that when certain key topics come up surrounding the(any) TTRPG, there is a massive discrepancy in perspective and expectation between these communities. I find this incredibly interesting, because on the surface I don't think a lot of people realize exactly where those differences might lie. These topics are:

Dice Fudging / Stakes and Death / The Right Game

Dice Fudging: People feel very strongly about this topic. It's interesting to see polls taken that indicate people obviously do not agree, either here or in the D&D community. I Typically see, (A) "The GM has a screen for a reason and is there to have enough control however necessary over events to guide the game down a narratively satisfying and fun path," against (B) "The GM is there to facilitate fair play on behalf of the players and the NPC's, and represent all sides accurately and fairly in the interest of game integrity,".

Stakes and Death: These topics strongly shape the nature of the system, group, and specific campaign, and vice versa, probably more than most other issues. Character building, the length of the campaign, the even the entire purpose of play and the prep that goes into it has a large part to do with what the expectation of characters' lifespan will be. We have, (A) "Character death should be rare and handled carefully, often being a significant story moment or telegraphed by a climax or otherwise great threat," against (B) "Character death is a constant risk of the choices players make and the hand of fate, and serves as the core stakes of all decisions,".

The Right Game: In response to the previous two topics, I often see people try and cut ahead to suggest that a better or different game solution might serve the needs of (A) better. This argument might look like, (B) "If you don't want your character to die, and you don't like bad dice rolls, maybe you should play a system without death and dice, or at least where some sort of metacurrency is spent to ensure "control" over the narrative in an open and fair way."

The argument against (A) is fairly simple; You should try playing other systems, because there are many games to play that foster different styles that you may end up enjoying or prefering. This is not untrue, although people have a limited amount of time, and often the group that they have. (People often suggest finding a new group, but for many people the group is the friend group is the reason they're playing in the first place.)

The argument against (B) is a bit more nuanced, and I think underrepresented, because (A) might not even have a grasp of its nature. This is because:

I think D&D players desire and expect a specific set of contradictory goals. D&D players want to believe in the stakes, but still generally prevail. Phrased this way, this is not unreasonable at all, and forms the backbone of most genre films. However, applied to the nature the TTRPG, where simulationism and agency rear their heads, a less charitable way to make the same statement would be: "D&D players want an unrealistic game where there are no stakes and nothing matters."

However, I will now try to steelman their position.

While of course it needs to be said that even within the D&D hobby, games vary wildly between "gamist/simulationist/narrativist", and "challenging/just here for the vibes", as well as within any other metric, I do believe the majority are heavily clustered over the type of game I'll be describing.

Before I really got into actively playing D&D, but still was quite interested in TTRPG design, I had a constant nagging question for GM's, and the answer was rarely satisfying: "I don't understand how you can have your players in constantly dangerous situations but also have multiyear campaigns with the same PCs without an absurd degree of metagaming or "retries". The answer is the core of what the modern D&D game is.

I find there is a massive amount of unspoken arguments around the insane power that a GM actually has, and how the acceptable choices that they have to make heavily outweigh the occasional fudged die. Assuming that the game isn't a series of well telegraphed battles with minor RP in between, the organic meta nature of quests means that players will be heavily encouraged to do whatever quests are put in front of them, and in the interest of "playing an adventurer" and not bogging the game down to a halt, not assuming an unwinnable deathtrap even when a formidable situation is telegraphed.

Fudging represents the "micro", while death/stakes represent the "macro", but are nearly the same issue, but first I will address the meta nature of a GM's direct influence, dice or no dice, fudge or no fudge.

While many problems can be cleverly solved by players or narratively failed forward until plot development, enemies can very realistically ambush PC's in very deadly ways, if they are being played "realistically, with intelligence and the desire to win," as they should be as per a simulationist leaning approach. The enemy should logically surround, trap, outnumber, and negate the PC's, and there's no limit to the ways and severity in which this could happen. Obviously, a GM's particular encounter has a massive influence on the fate of the party. There is a slim window where the outcome is not deterministic (sometimes referred to as a balanced encounter). While I understand that the simulationist approach is to offer a scenario, and realistically let the party try to adapt, all within the rules (And I easily see the merit in this), I submit that coming up with that well tailored encounter is itself a form of railroading. It just... isn't bad, so we don't call it that. The GM has just as much power to kill or spare the party without fudging any dice, but through presenting the emerging situation. 20 more enemies show up. 20 friendlies. A squad of deadly assassins with ludicrously high stealth/damage straight up murder a PC. The reasonably intelligent group of 20 low level mooks with ranged weapons focus fire on the squishy and kill them outright. Obviously, a good GM is trying to make good and compelling, if not always "fair" encounters. Some are winnable, some are not. But the fate of the party is always partially, if not mostly, in the hands of the GM. As a player, I always know this. Whether or not a GM fudges a roll or not to me falls under a surprisingly similar category as how the enemies we face mostly conspicuously forget to bring overwhelming numbers or use "unfair" tactics. I accept it because of the nature of the game. The GM rolling in the open does not remove the godlike influence they have at any moment, unless our game plays out like a wargame with little unpredictability and a promise of mechanical balance.

A question I have is: How exactly do GM's trying to accurately, realistically portray their enemies and their tactics not totally annihilate their PC's? There's of course a reason why in action films, the mooks don't do the logical thing and: rush the hero at the same time, deploy deadly snipers that actually hit their shots(see Halo2), lock the hero in a room and pump it full of gas, etc. It's actually too effective, and many realistic tactics have almost no viable counter and would dominate the reality of the game. So enemies don't do them, right? Obviously, a balance is struck, and perhaps some tense, narrow escapes are made, but as a rule... Playing the enemies this way has to end up in a short campaign, surely?

On the micro issue of fudging, I think the existence of the DM screen, as well as a few infamous Gygax quotes speak for themselves to a degree, though I can understand the appeal of rolling in the open. There are many games where the GM's role appears to be mostly as moderator, because someone's gotta control the opposition, but D&D doesen't seem to be it. Historically, the GM has always done a lot of rolling, perhaps even more so than now. But I digress.

As many have said, humans are really bad at statistics. We think 75% means that something will happen 3 out of 4 times. It kind of doesn't. It means it could easily happen 1, 2, 3, or 4 times out of 4. For many things like attacks, it's less important. But for moderately important rolls, like save or suck spells, it can often feel wrong for players if the enemy saves four times in a row. When a player lays down the same spell three turns in a row, on a boss monster encounter that is only going to last three turns anyway, that player(depending, gotta know your people) may feel infinitely worse if that spell never actually lands, and they accomplish nothing. Especially if its not even a hugely impactful one. Likewise, if a player gets crit three times in the opening move, many types of players will feel that the dice cheated them out of a reasonably fair encounter. Obviously, said players would not necessarily want to be told after, "Hey I fudged that die," but that does not change the fact that their investment and enjoyment may be significantly affected by a string of unlikely rolls. This does not mean that such strings should never happen, but that there are times when the GM may feel as if they are not adding anything to the game, compared with what they are taking. (And I understand that for these reasons people prefer less swingy dice resolutions than the D20, and that PF2 addresses the save or suck problem to some degree).

In polar opposition to the OSR, many, many players are not tactically minded, at all. They will frequently do what feels right or what whim comes to them, with little regard that the option is objectively unlikely to succeed or less effective from a strictly mechanical point of view. Such choices are often celebrated in the name of RP. But many people are simply not prepared to push their characters to peak efficiency in a life or death situation. They might not even know how. Obviously player expectations are important to figure out when starting a game, but I would find that most players I know would struggle to adapt to a realization that the GM expects them to "play smart", which often requires a certain degree of meta optimization of the party instead of each player acting out their own whims. This presents an issue where its quite easy for a GM to justify an enemy army of mooks selflessly using a well coordinated strategy, while your eclectic group of PCs just kind of do what feels cool.

And so, this brings us to the "macro" issue of Death and Stakes. Inevitably, if the micro issues presented manifest, that will bring us to situations where the dice combined with a realistically deadly scenario ends up with character death. While many embrace the realistic possibility of *actual character death, resulting in them making a new character, this does create a few problems.

Many people come to this hobby to live vicariously through a character that they find interesting or fun to play(I recognize many also do not, and that many of them I am now addressing here). They spend a lot of time exploring the character, from their personality and goals, to their aesthetic design. The GM may do extensive work planning their quest hooks and integrating the character into the campaign. While there may be some exceptions, obviously such a character is not designed to be casually expendable.

You also run into a less spoken about problem in terms of narrative suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude. There are many PC parties that are heavily tied to each other, or otherwise aren't just four people that happen to be Mercenaries/Space Marines/Whatever. They are personally motivated to continue their overarching campaign as a group. You can see this in many genre films, of course.

Whatever means to avoid character death, whether its an ass pull, a fudge, or what have you, is a contrivance. But so is replacing the dead PC. We just determine that this contrivance is necessary.

There are many parties where the reality of a member dying, and then being replaced (on the same day, no less) by some new person who is going to essentially serve the same meta role (doing all the same things with the party, probably), is actually absurd and very difficult to become immersed into. I don't see this contrivance as particularly better than whatever method the GM used to keep the character around.

Furthermore, there is the "narrativist" aspect to the game, however much or little you as GM wish for it to be. Characters almost never die because "someone just fought better", or "they just got hit by two many arrows" in a story, outside of very specific kinds of stories. Typically, there is a narrative reason for a character to die. Of course, people might say that we're playing a TTRPG, not a story. I don't think most (D&D)players agree, though. I think they think of it as a communal story, which all players and the GM have a role to play in. Which means, its still somewhat subject to what we expect from a narrative; compelling, and not meaninglessly random.

"Then no stakes?" Well, no.

Plenty of serial TV shows are extremely entertaining, and have stakes. They just don't frequently have TPK stakes, and the audience knows it. But there are other aspects of the story that are in jeopardy, or other characters or goals. And every so often, someone does bite the dust in a climactic moment. Certainly no one thought Iron Man was going to die in any of his films (and a lack of stakes is a frequent criticism of Superhero movies), but some such stories are still entertaining, have their own stakes, and death is an option when it really counts. You don't ask someone, "How can you enjoy Star Trek? There's no stakes!"

"Then just take character death off the table and be done with it." Well, also no.

This brings me back to my main point. I think a large amount of the friction between communities is that a large chunk of the D&D playerbase wants to play without safety rails while having safety rails. They absolutely want to play in a game where death is on the table, while simultaneously not wanting it to actually happen (most of the time). I know I fall into this category: I would dislike if the GM said, "Hey, I'm not going to kill your character". I would also be surprised if my character randomly died because he got focused by 12 crossbows randomly after playing him for four years. Player expectations, and all. But that four year campaign has been an interesting and remarkable thing to experience in a way, and I'll likely remember forever. That's not something that is possible without some conceit. (And for better and worse, you can see the design of D&D5E and now the revision focusing on being as safe and consistent in its math under the hood, while still giving the illusion of a ton of interesting "different" character styles.)

Obviously, none of this applies to the OSR style of play, but I think its this contradiction that separates these vastly different gaming subcultures, and that it's one that actually makes a lot of sense when properly expressed. I realize many of these stances are unpopular, and I don't even 100% agree with them, but I rarely see them well represented here. I'm curious how many agree, or think I'm totally off base, as well as how many think that this is a good or bad thing, if true.