Yeah, the people that do rules as written, or follow a book for a campaign to the letter, to hard often end up taking the fun out of it.
My first ever campaign I was an outlander ranger with high survival. We started in a swamp and it was written “pass survival check, if fail, roll to go in a random direction”. I somehow failed 7/8 rolls with +7 (bad luck). We spent the whole session going round in circles and ended up further away from our objective than we started.
I felt awkward/stressed, and the others just felt bored/frustrated.
Chatting with more seasoned players afterwards they were like “yeah, that shouldn’t be how it normally goes, but it’s not your fault, DM should have a fail safe for stuff like that. First rule is ‘is it fun’. Just cause the campaign says ‘do x’ doesn’t necessarily mean you should if it’s not fun for anyone”
That’s why I really enjoy the “fail but” or “success except” mechanic were even failing still advances the plot. Maybe you get lost however stumble upon something that can help with the objective.
Yeah, the people that do rules as written, or follow a book for a campaign to the letter, to hard often end up taking the fun out of it.
My first ever campaign I was an outlander ranger with high survival. We started in a swamp and it was written “pass survival check, if fail, roll to go in a random direction”. I somehow failed 7/8 rolls with +7 (bad luck). We spent the whole session going round in circles and ended up further away from our objective than we started.
I felt awkward/stressed, and the others just felt bored/frustrated.
Chatting with more seasoned players afterwards they were like “yeah, that shouldn’t be how it normally goes, but it’s not your fault, DM should have a fail safe for stuff like that. First rule is ‘is it fun’. Just cause the campaign says ‘do x’ doesn’t necessarily mean you should if it’s not fun for anyone”
That’s why I really enjoy the “fail but” or “success except” mechanic were even failing still advances the plot. Maybe you get lost however stumble upon something that can help with the objective.