Recent content by Thomas Shey

People seem to manage to get by doing that in my 13th Age game, and that's not that far off the beaten D&D path.

Well, thats' true of people who are kitbashing a game now, but for genuine designers it still begs the question if you're going to do a new design at this point why D&D is going to be your model unless its intended to be finishing in the specifically D&D pond (that is, to specifically be...

I think this in many case puts the cart before the horse. In an ideal world you're probably right, but at the end of the day, most players are going to play on what results they expect the mechanics are going to give them; if that's at odds with what the world theoretically would tell them, the...

And I wasn't talking about what people would do now with decades more of accumulate, but my attitude toward it back then. So here we are.

I kind of wish I couldn't.

Its liable to not be good enough for players who are expecting X and instead get X+Y/Z though.

The question at that point, especially back in the OD&D days, was why not just do it from the ground up.

The question is, by the time you've done all that, given it was about half the mechanics or more of OD&D, why even bother? Again, assuming its not all about network effect.

The problem always arises when a situation looks like a Christmas decoration. :S

There are issues I can see coming up with running FH that long without secondary capping mechanisms, but that's true long before that so its not an argument against it, per se. Its an odd case because FH isn't zero to hero (usually characters start out too capably for that) but the gap between...

That's often been my feeling about it, but I can understand someone who's tired of having to go back to that argument Yet Again. And I don't think its necessary when talking about OD&D, because, honestly, the other core mechanics (to-hit against AC, saving throws) and ones adjacent to hit...

My point was that while hit points were the standouts in simulation failure, almost all the combat mechanics did that, they were just a little easier to handwave. In the case of saving throws, it wasn't even obvious what was being represented; it looked pretty nakedly gamist for the most part.

Well, you could have them be both: look at Earthdawn.

They aren't really the same question. "60 sessions" requires a game to probably be functional over extended play, but it still may not be usable in unlimited play (about the only game systems I think really work for the latter are ones with baked in diminishing returns).

Well, as noted, trad games tend to have a lot more tolerance for the GM putting their thumb on the scale. In theory at least, if a set of rolls drags a PbtA game in a particular direction, the GM isn't supposed to stop it or even put the brakes on. There's a lot of rationals for doing that in...