pemerton's latest activity

In the same way that critical discussion of Hamlet often begins with a consideration of Shakespeare's text, so my critical discussion of...

Your second thing is a characteristic of all RPGing. It is what Edwards calls exploration. Your first thing is an overly narrow account...

Huh? Competence is all about what a person says and does. You seem to think that an amateur burglar is just as likely to blunder into a...

None of this speaks to my point. Hit-point based combat is (i) quite granular, and (ii) not a simulation of anything. It's a way of...

It's hardly arbitrary for me to compare two sorts of GM-driven/GM-centred play to a well-known approach to RPGing which (i) is not...

If you don't like the fiction, don't narrate it. I mean, you're coming up with fiction that you think is silly, then presenting it as...

A competent thief doesn't wake sleeping people.

In AD&D, a thief has a chance to pick pockets, that goes up with level but goes down with the level of their target. Clearly this...

By "we" you might mean "you". There is no such thing as "differently quantum". That just means "quantum that I don't like" as opposed to...

Whether or not a burglar opens the door while someone is there to see them has a lot to do with their competence as a burglar. At least...

But this just brings us back to the commonplace observation that getting sprung and/or startling someone is not completely independent...

It alluded to one, though.

I don't know any RPG where any PC can control the universe, so I'm not sure how this remark is meant to factor in. I mean, competent...

Right. I mean, I sometimes find that these threads have a bizarre character, where posters like @Micah Sweet accuse me of hating, or...

Yes. The fact that D&D is so commonly used for a simulationist agenda (or play with no particular CA agenda that has simulationist...