the endless cantrips, bloated hit points, super-healing, perfect magic casting, limited conditions, alignment issues, no risk/cost for magic, standard proficiency increase in all things across the board, bounded accuracy breakdown, high magic, broken feats, pointless odd numbered ability scores, dexterity superiority over strength, no tactics in weapons, monster manual = new PHB, d20 being swingy allowing proficient to surpass those proficient, the debate about material components for spells, bulk carrying, broken classes, spells granting auto successes, realism taking a backseat, world building with magic, weapon proficiency being a joke...etc
Emotional / spiritual conflict
Cost of using magic may incur a risk (possibly a physical toll)
Weapon choice playing a greater role
Limitations of magic and magical power
Bulk and weight are significant limitations
Importance of mundane equipment
Comeliness plays a role
Exhaustion is far more common
Slower recovery of health
For some reason I've been drawn back to these lists. I think its because I find them so very clear and powerful.
There is technical language that can be used to analyse and describe the relationship between (a) the mechanical (and quasi-mechanical, eg alignment) aspects called out in the first list, and (b) the fiction that is (not) produced by those mechanics, that is called out in the second list. The mechanical aspects constitute
resources,
effectiveness and
positioning, as components of PC build; and also establish
currency rules that mediate between resources, effectiveness, and positioning: and it is the upshot of these currency rules that precludes, or at least pushes against, the generation of the fiction that is called out in the second list.
Being able to use that technical language to describe the workings of the game is helpful for designers, including those like
@AnotherGuy who want to build their own FRPG system. Of course having a technical vocabulary won't magically produce a good design on its own; but it at least points towards things one can think about in coming up with, and testing, and analysing, one's design.
Being clearer in the rulebooks, about the intended or likely emergent play experience, doesn't necessarily require using the technical vocabulary of design. But it would involve stating, in non-technical language, the sorts of patterns and consequences that the technical language is used to describe and analyse. This would be like any other instruction manual, which should be comprehensible to non-engineers, but should state propositions and reflect technical relationships that the engineers understand and that has informed and/or is the result of their design.
A simple example: a game with
endless cantrips (effectiveness), where
spells grant auto-success (reliable effectiveness), plus
high magic (so cantrips and spells provide
good effectiveness, even permitting
the MM to become a new PBH for some players), plus
perfect magic casting with no risk/cost (so no resource risked/consumed by casting - cf the hit points that are risked/consumed by sword-fighting), does not have currency rules that will produce fiction about the costs, limits, or risks of magical power.
Another example: a game with
super-healing (so hit points are a low-stakes resource), combined with
broken feats and
bounded accuracy breakdown (so effectiveness can be significantly increased without increasing the pressure/stakes on that resource), where there is little or no
tactics in weapons (so that choice of weapon does not significantly interact with fictional position to modify effectiveness), does not have currency rules that will produce fiction about the importance of weapon choice, and similar mundane concerns, in succeeding in violent conflict, where those who act casually without thinking through such concerns will at best suffer the consequences of a slow recovery of health, and perhaps will suffer much worse.
A third example: a game with
standard proficiency increase in all things across the board (effectiveness) but in which
the swingy d20 frequently allows the non-proficient to surpass the proficient (effectiveness) does not have currency rules that will produce fiction about the importance of training, experience and preparation in overcoming challenges. (This last one is not on the second list, but I hope
@AnotherGuy feels it fits into the spirit of the list nevertheless.).
What the currency rules that underpin the relationship set out above
will tend to produce is a fiction in which magic is a boon and a bounty that everyone should want, a well that is plentiful and painless to drink from; a fiction in which choice of weapon is primarily colour and in which violence is casual and even perhaps on occasion cartoonish; and a fiction in which luck and spontaneity, not doing the hard yards, is the key to overcoming challenges.
As I said above, it is possible for a rulebook to describe the sort of fiction the game's currency rules will tend to produce, without having to explain, in technical terms, why or how it tends to produce it.
