Gamble based RPG's and the urge to 'put the players to the test'.

Originally posted by me over here. In regard to putting the players to the test, an urge perhaps felt by people even as they use a largely gamble based RPG:

I'll give the background to this 'challenge the player' impulse.

1. D&D and many others have no option for not to the death of gaining XP, or little in the way of that.
2. So players are forced into potentially lethal combat in order to play at all.
3. Which is based around random rolls, which they can't affect.
4. Then the players get hissy when they lose (especially a beloved character perma dead) or threaten to get hissy or the DM just second guesses they will or might.
5. The DM then starts looking for ways to invent challenge for the player, so it's the player who screwed up if they die.
6. The dice are still there and get in the way of #5.
7. It all hinges on the fact that to play at all involves going into potentially lethal combat, whereas if there was a non lethal option then players could choose (that actually gained XP and gold) whether they go into non lethal activities or potentially lethal combats is their choice. Thus forfilling #5 by dint that they could have chosen non lethal/stayed in the shire, but didn't.

From someone who wrestled with this, each of those steps, for years.

Dice and Table Top Wargaming - The False Strategic?

I was watching some people play the table top war game 'Warmachine' the other day.

It made me wonder, do dice rolls simply have to be part of such a game? What exactly do they do?

Say instead you had randomly set up start conditions of some kind (but exposed - not like a shuffled deck, all the start conditions are clear from the, err, start). Then everything else simply has rules which are chess like (and tie into the random starting conditions).

One of the elements of this is that the scenarios are repeatable. You could play it all again, using the same start up as previously, and try different methods of approach.

Where as with dice - sure, people try some tactics. But are they interested in trying different methods of approach in how to try to win the scenario? Particularly when they can't  with a dice system (you just can't repeat the scenario at an intellectual level). Or do they just wanna get lucky with dice and win - classic gambler approach?

I'm not against a gambler approach, but generally only when its clear that's what your doing. Rather than it appearing to be some strategic game, but in the end you'll give up and just hope for high rolls (yet keep calling it a strategic game).

I mean really, you could have the most half assed strategy in the world, but if you kept rolling really well, you'd win. What does that say in regards as to whether strategy or gambling comes first? Not that I could see much strategy in the game I watched - they moved towards each other, shooting at first, then hitting when the got close.

Basically strategy is deprioritised - ostensibly strategy has first position in what is important in the game. But really it's in second or perhaps even third place.

I'm trying to think of a tag for that - what do you call it, in just a word or two, when a product is supposed to be about X first and foremost, but actually X comes second or third?