Recent content by pemerton

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!

I use bad information in some RPG contexts, but I don't think it's a good fit for a game where (i) the players roll the dice, and (ii) the players are playing to beat the dungeon in the classic manner. In the classic game, the GM often rolls the dice, and so can hand out bad information with a...

If the players don't know, and can't reasonably learn, that they have 36 turns, then the GM's clock doesn't add much to gameplay.

Classic Traveller calls all player-side rolls (I think it's all of them) throws, short for "saving throws". Though some are closer to what you describe - eg Vacc Suit skill, or evasion using Ship's Boat skill - than others. As far as "That changes the gameplay loop to one where the players...

That depends very much on other features of play and system. Eg if there is a light clock, and/or a wandering monster clock, and/or a hunger/exhaustion clock, then spending time is quite important.

In a classic dungeon crawl, you might get through the gate with the rusted lock by pushing over a large statute to have it crash into the gate and break it open. But pushing over the statue would often require some sort of STR-based roll. There's a tradition/practice, going back to the...