That one is not objective, either. "Particular meaning" is subjective. What has a particular meaning to you, might not have the same meaning to me. Look at the example given for that definition.
2. having a particular meaning; indicative of something.
"in times of stress her dreams seemed to her especially significant"
What do I care what you dream meant to you. It was particularly meaningful in your life, but it means diddly squat in mine.
Jesus Christ! “Meaning” also has an objective definition. As in, for example, “the meaning of the word.” I’m not talking about what a rule means to you personally, I’m talking about the specific game function it signifies. But f*** it! I don’t care enough about this incessant nitpicking about my word choice. If you want to pretend meaning and significance can never be objective, fine, but for the love of god, just tell me what word you want me to use to mean “is important to the rules system” so we can get on with the f***ing point!
Let's take initiative. What does it indicate for everyone?
It indicates how likely a character is to act before other characters and monsters in combat.
As people are so fond of telling me, people interpret rules differently, so even the text very often doesn't have a single, objective meaning. This is especially true in 5e where the game was designed not to have particular meaning. "Rulings over rules" and all that jazz.
People interpret rules differently, but there are correct interpretations and incorrect interpretations. It would be incorrect to interpret higher initiative as indicating that a character is less likely to act first in combat, or that a character with a lower attack bonus is more likely to hit. One would be within their rights as a DM to
change the rules such that they woeked that way in their home game, but they would be objectively wrong if they claimed that was how it works by the rules as written.
It's not semantics. As noted above, "particular meaning" is very subjective. Alignment has very particular meaning for many people, but doesn't mean much of anything to me. Despite there being no mechanics in 5e for it, alignment does have particular meaning.
That is a semantic argument. You are trying to refute my argument by asserting that the words I used to articulate it don’t mean what I think they mean. And I’m done playing that game. Tell me what word you will accept as meaning “has a function within the game’s mechanics” and I’ll use it. Otherwise, we have nothing left to discuss on this matter.
What formula did I use to come up with a yes or no?
I told you, “If gold offered is => [the value you decide the guard will accept], then guard accepts.” Your formula may or may not include certain actions that can increase or decrease the value referenced in the brackets, possibly depending on the results of a randomly generated number (a check). Just because you can apply formulae flexibly and without conscious effort does not mean you are not executing a mechanical function. The human brain is an incredibly powerful and adaptable computer, which is why D&D is, in my opinion, better than any video game. The hardware it runs on is capable of interpreting any input and intuitively divising a function to execute it on the fly.
As noted by [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], there are too many factors to consider to even be able set down some sort of formula. You can give 10 DMs the same circumstances, and you will have some automatically say yes, some automatically say no, and some give a roll with varying DCs. That's not formulaic in any way.
Those DMs are using different formulae. Much like if you put the same input phrase into 10 chat bots, you’ll get many different responses. That’s the nature of smart learning systems, they will produce different results from one another because they have learned from different experiences.
For every "It's not real D&D" that I heard about 4e, I also heard "Yes this is real D&D" from someone else. If that's not indicative that "What D&D is" is subjective, I don't know what is.
That is true. But very, very few would agree that a collaborative storytelling session with no rules at all is D&D. Even fewer would agree that a game played using the GURPS system is D&D.
There absolutely is a distinction. Roll D20 + ability modifier and if you equal or exceed AC, you hit, is not roleplaying. It's a mechanic for attacks. In the game when you tell me that you swing your sword at Brave Sir Robbin's head while calling him a yellow bellied sap sucker, it's roleplaying. Only the other side, when a PC and an NPC simply have a talk about something, that's roleplaying without any mechanics whatsoever.
Look, I could break down all the reasons I disagree with the things you say in this paragraph, but I don’t think anything either of us could say will change the other’s mind about this. The only reason I brought it up at all was because you were framing me as preferring mechanics over roleplay, and I wanted to make it clear that that is not the case. Roleplay is the reason I play D&D, and in my view, the mechanics cannot be separated from that. I suppose, if you had to frame me within your view, I consider roleplaying and mechanics as equally important, but it would be more accurate to say that I consider roleplaying to be of primary importance and the mechanics of a roleplaying game to be an inseparable part of that.
No worries. I THINK it might have been [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] if it matters. Not positive, though.
It was Jester David. I can’t even see 5ekyu’s posts, they have me blocked.
General or specific, I still don't have to do any work to make it matter. It already matters within the rules as provided to me.
Then you, Maxperson, are not included in the general “you, who find the use of gold to be lacking” that I was using. But whatever. It’s fine, I’ll use “one” in place of the general form of you. I’m done arguing with you about what words mean.
Downtime includes building freaking castles, buying land, building temples in every city of every country, and more. That's not trivially inexpensive.
Sure, there are some big-ticket things you can spend gold on in downtime, but again, lack of scarcity is only half the problem. The other half is lack of mechanical functionality in the things you can buy.
