(in D&D at least)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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They do if the DM says they do, y'all get way too hard for the rules as written.
Not to mention which game you're actually playing.
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, one of the other players in that sesh was a forever GM, he was saying how he will maybe do one big "bad roll, bad consequences", but then if it happens again something like "you go in the right direction but you twist your ankle in the brush" or "it takes twice as long" or something