Recent content by stonehead

That seems perfectly compatible with my point. I said "the party has goals", not "the GM gives the players goals" (only being this pedantic because you were pedantic about 'interesting' vs 'surprising' : P). Their goals shouldn't uniformly increase in difficulty level by level. The petty thief...

Is it really surprising? "Scaling DCs" is just math homework that leads to no mechanical change. A "scaled world" plays into the fantasy of growing from a regular person into a great hero. Progressing from fighting goblins all the way up to fighting dragons is a pretty central part of DnD in...

Does it have any of the things I referenced in the original post, like sharpening your sword, or cooking for the party?

I've never heard of that system, but it sounds great. What does it play like? Is there any other system you would compare it to?

When I first started playing ttrpgs ages ago, I found some obscure mundane items in the equipment section of the core rule book that really piqued my imagination. They were simple things like a bar of soap, or a whetstone, or an encyclopedia (not the most exciting, I know). I really liked the...

That's true, what I described isn't hard scaling DCs, because the in-universe challenge also scales. The original post of this thread framed it in a way that makes scaling DCs almost entirely undesirable. I have seen more general complaints though, that levelling up is pointless because when...

Personally, I prefer static DCs as framed by the original post, as it seems like everyone else does. I do think though that scaling DCs are kind of an innevitable consequence of a high-variance resolution mechanic like a d20, and high power level scaling. @djotaku makes the important...

By that logic, is it possible to play a game with several books worth of optional rules without house ruling it? GURPS has several dozen books worth of optional rules. Is it impossible to run a GURPS campaign RAW? Again, I would emphasize that in a lot of systems outside the DnD-adjacent...

It's worth pointing out that if you leave the realm of DnD-likes, a lot of games out there are much easier to run 100% RAW, because the rules are written less intrusively. Apocalypse world, Cypher, Fate/Fudge, etc. A lot of game systems are character creation, resolution mechanic, damage...

Oh, sure. I didn't mean to imply that having a wide gap between complexity floor and ceiling was necessarily a good thing. Just that two different people playing in the same campaign could legitimately see different levels of complexity. Every game needs to answer "why should I play this...

Then we only have a disagreement about terms. I think the average person who has been both a GM and a player would design a better game than the average person who has experience with only one of the two. If you want to call that person a GM, then fair enough. If we're trying not to be elitest...

A game designed "purely by players" probably wouldn't end up being very good. I would still love to see one, because I think it would be super interesting to compare it to a conventional system. I agree with @Tigris's original point though that many systems and modules are a bit too GM focused...

Another way you could break it down is differentiating between complexity ceiling and complexity floor. What's the simplest character you could play and what's the most complex? The gap in complexity between "Human Fighter" and "Multiclass Druid 1/Paladin 2/Wizard 10" can be quite high. Combat...

Good point, I added an option for that

A rule you can sometimes ignore is a good example of early game complexity though, which is all @SpellObjectEnthusiast was saying. Pathfinder 1 also has numerous options that change what does and does not trigger an attack of opportunity. Either way, trying to convince someone what they find...