Recent content by Fenris-77

Perhaps I should have expected it, but I didn't think that the idea of player skill would be so contentious. I thought the general use (in OSR playstyles for example) was pretty common. Huh.

A character in a role playing game is a heuristic that allows the player to take on the role of a character in a setting and interact with that setting despite a low information environment. By low information I mean that we don't have access to the full range of human sensory experience, nor...

Oh yes. Not the Brindlewood mechanic specifically though, much as I love it, but some of that feel maybe. I'm not a fan of gating information behind rolls, or at least not much of it, and there needs to be lots of clues scattered around for every new element in the mystery so that not getting to...

Yeah, I like "I need an NPC on the fly" generators. I'll be putting one in Ashalom for the reasons you mention.

I don't mean the sort that, say Shadowdark has, where a background stands in somewhat abstractly for a possible skill list. In that case the player needs to think hard about his character in order to justify the application, which is all to the good. This links specific actions with specific...

Or a game that doesn't have a character skill mechanic. There are lots of those.

Here's a good question. Would you want to see a specific procedure for running investigations or would you prefer to just freehand things with the city elements provided?

This is the way.

Nope, sorry. Other games, like Monster of the Week (just as one example) handle party splitting just fine. Nothing changes and the system chugs on. It's not a GM skill issue. I can move the spotlight around just fine thanks, it's neither a complicated nor rare skill. The problem in this case...

And in this case you are factually incorrect. Most OSR games are very upfront about the function of encounter rolls. That function is only peripherally diegetic (at best). I don't give a good goddamn how many times you repeat the same biased and incorrect things btw, but if your throat is...

Oh no, no you don't. You don't get to say it's diegetic enough here but not in the case of metacurrency where the only difference is that your opinion of the underlying mechanic is different. Sorry man, you need to pick a stance and stick with it. Encounter rolls are, not to put too fine a point...

That isn't even remotely what those mechanics are actually doing. You know it and I know it. We are gentlemen and lies do not become us. So, Princess Bride quotes aside, this is still some shaky analysis. The design of encounter rolls has nothing to do with diegetic anything. It has to do with...

You also said you have no experience with encounter rolls or OSR games, which is what I was specifically talking about. That would suggest that you don't have anything to say about those mechanics. And those points are in complete contradiction, that's we are having this little contretemps...

My man, you are busy criticizing rules and mechanics you have no experience with. You don't get to play the badly designed card here. I'll also point out that your rules as setting truth position is precisely the opposite of your newly stated intolerance for badly design rules position. Rather...

This all begs the question as to why you're making declarative statements about systems and playstyles you have no experience with.