On the Balanced Encounter

I am not sure if anybody is noticing but "balance" in role-playing is eroding like sugar does in water. The concept of fixed expectations and success based upon an understood mathematical equation, the basis for a consistent board game, has been an axiom since the second week of the RPG's existence, I'll blame Bunnies and Burrows just for fun. It's been plaguing our hobby milieu as well. Of course like sugary water filling up our convenience store coolers, those that keep talking about it take up more than most of the space on the shelf of RPG gaming ideas.

It seems though that as many Gamers are being a bit more adventurous these days. The one example I can think is in an interview with Jeremy Crawford where he states, " ...We do not expect every time that adventurers come face to face with a monster that it is what we would consider to be a balanced encounter. Sometimes it's happening because it's right for the story and what that means is sometimes the smartest thing to do is to negotiate or run for your life... " Coming from a D&D-head, that is like Pope Francis saying, "Do what you want, I am about to go balls deep into that pool boy and his wife." on national TV. Finally someone realizes that thrilling can be fun even if overly dramatic-- amazing how many people think that drama ought to be removed the hobby of Adventure Gaming.

I bring up this topic for the T&T tinpot and the creators of the forthcoming "DT&T." From what I've been reading they've been overly concerned about making T&T "more balanced. I say it two years after they received their crowd-sourced moneys because I am getting the notion that they haven't really started on producing anything as of yet. I bet there is a good chance to avoid another D&D clone, especially now that D&D itself is trying to be more like T&T.