We Forgot to Challenge

A small thought for the day. We all play with house-rules. Nobody really plays a game to the exact details of the rule-system (or at the very least- almost no one). If there is a single thing that I saw common to all of those house-rules, it was without a doubt the side they favored.

All those house-rules that I've seen through the years? They were all in favor of the player characters. They made their lives easier, they're role-filling quicker. They diminished the challenge.

To put it differently, it's like we GMs forgot that being fans of the PCs doesn't mean letting them succeed without a sweat. It means putting them through a challenge and hoping to see them triumph, believing that they'll succeed. But they do need the challenge firstly. After all, without challenge, there's no real point in winning, or even in playing those things, battles, intrigues etc. And yet, we make their lives easier with house-ruling and with so much more.

I don't know if I managed to say something, if I managed to express what I think. But I do hope that at the very least, I'm not alone in thinking about this, in hoping to see it changed.