Recent content by Micah Sweet

I don't trust WotC's current design philosophy enough to trust them with anything new, but I could get behind reprints of their older stuff. A series of volumes fully reprinting the Strategic Review and Dragon Magazine wouldn't go awry, for example.

Hence the advice in the book explaining what using these rules risks. Way better IMO than just saying "no". No table is required to use these rules. If someone has to say no let it be the GM, not the rules.

I have to agree. There's no ironclad reason social skills can't work on PCs. Just common (but not universal) custom.

Fair enough. Good to know where the lines are.

And like I just said, I'm sure that's how you are seeing it. I don't. Why do you assume that the player doesn't value that verisimilitude as well? Is it because that's how you'd feel about it? If so, then please just state your personal, subjective opinion plainly.

I certainly believe that it comes across that way for you, but please speak for yourself.

Do you carefully consider every one of those actions for every creature on every turn?

People also choose to go along with the pressure to do otherwise at least as often. That's what the dice are for.

D&D is just not the game to mechanically enforce that. Got to rely on the social contractand session 0.

Seems a little reductive. It's not like the GM is seizing control of the PCs left and right in any of these games.

Entertaining though. Big fan of House here.

No one says that, but I must admit I sometimes get that impression.

They did it back in the 3e days, with Dragonlance, Ravenloft, and L5R (which they owned at the time), to name a few.

WotC to my mind seems to have picked the biggest one and ran with it.

I don't recall anyone identifying the whole conversation in that manner. If you want to control a group of creatures in the way I'm describing, it's a more complicated class that requires more attention. It's not a simple proposition, and that IMO should be ok. Just make that clear in the book.