Recent content by pemerton

I'll accept that the games I mentioned - In A Wicked Age, Wuthering Heights, and Cthulhu Dark - are pretty niche. But I've never read Wuthering Heights (or any Bronte novel - I'm better read in non-fiction than fiction! And thus am one of those who reads the reviews rather than the works). To...

In A Wicked Age; Wuthering Heights' Cthulhu Dark (at least as I've played it). Sorry, I couldn't help myself . . .

I follow the rules of the game I'm playing. For instance, 4e D&D connects treasure parcels to levels. So when I was GMing 4e D&D, as the PCs accrued XP on their way to their next level, I would introduce treasure - most often in the form of gifts or "power ups" rather than loot - in accordance...

Huh? How did your claim about the comparison of running a session to a lesson-plan like outline suddenly turn into a licence to make fun of me for my "privilege"? If you're trying to resolve a campaign before someone moves away, or whatever, sure, maybe that's different. Is that every session...

Speaking just for myself, if my RPGing produces stories that are comparable to B-movies, or to second-tier late-70s Marvel Comics, I'm pretty happy! Even low-grade commercial entertainment has generally been produced by people who compose stories for a living; me and my group are a bunch of...

I get that. My point is that the inventory management aspect, which takes up time and focus at the table, means there is quite a bit of time and focus at the table that is not about "story".

I don't disagree with you about the mechanics, and some of their emergent consequences. But I think I do disagree a bit about how much this produces story. The main RPG I've played (GMed) recently is Torchbearer 2e. It certainly ticks your first box (gp aren't XP, but there are other features...

Yeah, I haven't been following all of this rules/no rules discussion, but the idea that we're not rolling the dice, so we're not following any rules is odd to me. It's not as if, in those moments of play, the players suddenly start describing what they see as they look down the dungeon corridor...

I'm just spit-balling here, but maybe we could even come up with some labels for these different things. Like maybe the first could be labelled "neo-trad" (especially if the Bob's player has a lot of say over the scene content) or "high concept sim" (if it's the GM who has a lot of say over the...

Yes. I've been saying this a lot - most recently in multiple posts across two threads; but on these boards for 15+ years! Trying to make sense of the game play that Gygax describes in his rulebooks through the lens of story is, in my view, somewhere between misleading and hopeless. That...

I only have a very general sense of Daggerheart, know Honey Heist by name and that's it, and have heard of Crash Pandas for the first time in your post. I am familiar with one type of prepared set-up for play that avoids railroading but is likely to produce a good story-type experience in an...

The multiple layers of resilience reminds me a bit of Agon 2e. Though the Ironsworn systems is more intricate, I think. I haven't tried to calculate the probabilities of the resolution system. But just yesterday I was reading this from Vincent Baker, about different ways of setting up a PbtA...

Again, I don't know what you mean by "story focused mechanic". The games that @Neonchameleon and I were talking about were Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World. What are examples from those games of story focused mechanics?

No. I'm talking about playing with my friends. (Which the person I replied to, @Scott Christian, also was as best I can tell.) The convention games I've played in tend to be railroads, for obvious reasons. The most enjoyable ones tend to railroad for most of the game, but open up into a real...

I agree with Neonchameleon. Although I'm not sure what @Reynard has in mind by "purely trad games". I also don't know what "organic" is supposed to mean here. But anyway, I've played a lot of Rolemaster (thousands of hours). I've also played a bit of Burning Wheel (not that many hours...