I've been following discussions about leveling systems in concert with or in contrast to horizontal ones and this made me realize I haven't bothered to tie leveling to any fiction.
Which sticks out for me because of how much the rest of the game I am running leans that way!
The level process...
Don't have much to add except to mention that while standards in terms of distribution are better now for small, indie FLGS's (it's possible to diversify), this is still dictated by geography.
If your US shop was located in "ag country" or "rural" (i.e. city pop. 90k, state capitol 1.5-2 hours...
Comment to say I like the attempt to fashion replacement wings that some suggested. I thought immediately of How to Train Your Dragon. It's nice because it's something the PCs could do that lets them exercise their agency.
I also like the idea of having to negotiate with a more powerful NPC...
I've looked a little at this too; my feeling is that you'd need to use it as your base system for your players (class, spells and combat system). Some people who've been discussing their games have mentioned they like the 3 action economy and emphasis on reactions.
Monsters wouldn't be too...
Kinds of video games (puzzle, simulator, fps, rts, arpg etc and more recently soulslike/roguelike/roguelites) : Kinds of TTRPGs (5e D&D, OSR, PbtA, GMless/solo, Storygames) feels more closely aligned than above.
Most of the time a crit fail/crit success results in a very favorable or very unfavorable occurrence in the fiction.
One time a player used a less than ideal weapon (sword) to punch through a wood wall. They rolled a crit fail; their weapon went through, got stuck past their wrist. They had to...
Defining Interactivity (from alldeadgenerations) is a post that's part of an ongoing series primarily on dungeon design, but this particular entry was focused on keying so that surroundings become more interactive.
Many of the points people previously brought up as being constructively helpful...