Today, I ran a session of D&D in which the party had to cross an exceptionally hazardous cavern. It was a 90-foot-long cavern with a 50-foot drop into a lake of boiling mud. The cavern featured a pair geysers that were supposed to go off every 30 seconds or so, splashing everything (and everyone) in the room with burning mud. Crossing the room should have taken ingenuity, difficult skill checks, and at least enough time for the party to take a considerable amount of damage from the volcanic mud geysers.
However, I went easy on them. I didn't have the geysers go off as often as I should have, and I didn't have them deal as much damage as I should have had them deal. The party crossed the cavern with little trouble and minimal injuries. Arguably, I made it too easy for them.
There is value in difficulty, even in games. In real life, difficulty is good because it helps us grow. Heavier weights grow stronger muscles. Real-world difficulty also lets people earn a greater sense of accomplishment. The greater the challenge, the greater the victory.
Good difficult games simulate that. Difficult games force their players to develop skill at playing them and then let the players feel amazing when their challenges are overcome. Getting across a 90-foot-long cavern with frequently-erupting boiling mud geysers should feel like an accomplishment, as though the players overcame a significant challenge. Today, I accidentally robbed my players of that experience by making the challenge too easy.
In a way, we're lucky God never makes that mistake. Life's challenges are difficult because God knows that they have to be. If they were too easy, they wouldn't help us grow as much and it wouldn't really feel like an accomplishment when we overcome them. If life wasn't difficult, it'd be pointless. God wants to make sure we really earn our victories and those victories are tough enough to be worth earning.
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