Recent content by pemerton

I don't think this makes much sense. There is no objective entity the D&D multiverse. When I play D&D, it's objectively true that I'm playing D&D. But it's not objectively, or canonically, true that the stuff I'm imagining with my friends is a component of some other imaginary thing the D&D...

I don't know exactly how BitD explains what you've posted here. I think Ironsworn does a pretty good job. And your post is clear too! It's pretty hard to translate it into a difficulty-based system without loss or distortion, but here's my attempt: In D&D, the difficult position would be...

I don't know Sorcerer as well as I should: what happens when Aedhros's hand goes to the hilt of his knife?

@thefutilist That most recent post sets things out very clearly. I'm trying to think about some of my play through that lens. I think that my Prince Valiant play has little (off the top of my head, none - but that probably isn't right) generative resolution. Generally the conflict, if there is...

I tend to agree - the "boatload" suggets a lot of prescripting events, and maybe also a monopoly on backstory. I think this depends on the system, and other stuff too. I've run plenty of games where I didn't prep, and plenty of those have been plenty of fun.

I haven't played or GMed BitD. But it seems to me that, if a player wants to roll Prowl to reflect their PC taking a sneaky strike in the midst of an ongoing melee, that should increase the risk - like, Risky to Desperate? (If I've got the terminology right.)

My take away from this is that, for the skill list to work, (i) the table has to care about the difference between getting in close and fight-y with the bluecoats, and bowling them all over by wildly swinging your hammer, and (ii) the GM has to make the effort to have these things play out...

This made a lot of sense to me! I can't really credit that the way players debate and discuss among one another and work out their action declarations is "organic" in D&D but is "writers' room" in BitD.

By "internal consistency", you seem to mean something like "has a uniformity of trope and tone". Not a property of the fiction from the fiction's perspective, but of the fiction from an audience's perspective. You also seem to be assuming that RPGing involves "an (or the) adventure". The whole...

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".