Recent content by pemerton

What are these "light and simple systems" that encourage "playing the GM"? Or that are as close to just pass/fail as possible? The light and simple system I have the most experience with is Prince Valiant. Neither of those propositions is true of it. Whether a system admits of results other...

You seem to be positing bad GMing.

I get what you're saying, but I have a feeling that at least some aspects of genre and some aspects of playstyle overlap. I feel an ammo-tracking combat system, for instance, doesn't fit well with space opera genre, but suggests something more Tom Clancy-esque. I'm happy to concede it's...

As best I can recall, I don't think I've ever run a "generic"/"universal" RPG. But if I did, it would probably be HeroQuest Revised. Another possibility would be Story Bones (Maelstrom Storytelling without the setting).

I'm not really strong on the concept of "roguelike" progression; but here are the Advancement rules from Knave: Whenever a PC accumulates 1000 XP, they gain a level. As a guideline, PCs receive 50 XP for low-risk accomplish-ments, 100 XP for moderate-risk accomplishments, and 200 XP for...

I assume it's because 4e has basically two settings for skills: skilled or unskilled. There are further adjustments: class abilities, race abilities, feats, etc; but untrained (no adjustment beyond stat) or trained (stat +5) is the basic logic of the 4e skill system.

Well in that case, this claim is false: Because there are RPGs in which the actual maths of discrete skills is noticeable and is important to play.

I didn't realise that you were talking only about 5e D&D. Your post (and the thread more generally) didn't make that clear.

Combat can be resolved via "typical narration-based gameplay" the same as any other activity. And then it will be as real-time as any other activity.

I think that in systems where roll is dice pool based (Burning Wheel and its cousins, BitD and its cousins, Prince Valiant, etc) people would notice. Rolling 1D and trying to get 3 successes is pretty different from rolling 6D and trying to get 3 successes.

They can also be seen as building on thief abilities, secret door detection, rangers' tracking ability, etc.

These seem to be pretty similar ideas. A world where events occur with the regularity of a metronome is just as "meta" as the OotS world. No more weird than someone calculating that the incidence of random meetings is structured around 2 hour intervals. All gameplay involves imposing...

I mean some sort of game-regulated countdown or measure that leads to consequences. Eg each action takes a turn, and a torch burns for 4 turns (light clock); each action takes a turn, and every 4 turns the GM rolls for wandering monsters (wandering monster clock); each action takes a turn, and...

If there's no clock that the players can work against and/or try to control then, in my view, the consequence seems to be just prompting the GM to narrate something. Which the GM was presumably going to do anyway, if the game was not going to just wrap up at that point.

Flashbacks!