Recent content by The Stray

I edited my response above, but you seem to have already been typing a reply, so I'll reiterate: It's widely held that a PC is not just the abilities they have on their sheet...they are more than the sum of their mechanics. Thus, then, it follows that NPCs and monsters aren't the sum of their...

Whyever not, though? An NPC is not bound by their stats anymore than a PC is, so why couldn't two states (a version that's a monstrous version for normal use and a more detailed version for PC use if they join a party) exist?

My argument here is that the elf has a different metafictional purpose depending on who is playing them. If this is a character that's being passed through the hands of different players (GM included), I can see the case for them having the same build as a PC, but absent that, having them go...

Yeah, I'm not touching this.

No, this is emphatically and empirically not the case. Because NPCs are not PCs. You yourself recognize that a distinction exists between PC and monster, but you constantly refuse to acknowledge how arbitrary your distinctions between "monster" and "PC-playable race" are -- You and @Micah Sweet...

This is a distinction without a difference. NPCs are not PCs, playable race or not. All NPCs are monsters. Or, if you prefer, all monsters are NPCs.

Asserting a normative preference, fine, make the argument. But it would be nice if @Lanefan would stop talking down to people as if they don't understand/didn't hear him. I've been gaming since 1996, I think I know a thing or two about what I'm talking about my own self when I disagree with his...

And for the millionth time: No they do not. That may be your preference, but this is not a requirement. And it's bad game-design to expect it to be so. for Gygax's sake, can you please stop asserting your preferences as universal axioms that must be followed from on high!? Pretty please? With...

While this might be true, the problem isn't usually a setting problem. Again, this is a problem that comes down to the function of the NPC as they exist as a Doyalist game construct, not as they exist as a fictional representation of a being within the Watsonian dialectic. Game balance usually...

Sure. But this is where I'm coming from when I come at this as a game-design issue rather than a setting or character design one. It's easier to paper over decisions made for balance or niche-protection reasons with lore than it is to correct a mistake when lore is used to justify giving players...

I have endless binders full of hand-scrawled notes for games that died on the vine because I was focusing on Watsonian stuff at the expense of other concerns. Call it learning a harsh lesson at the hands of Mistress Experience.

None of my numbered reasons are intended to, either, except for number 3, which is the only one you're focused on. That may be fine for you when you're world-building, but it's bad game design to focus only on Watsonian priorities. Verisimilitude and immersion are Watsonian concerns. There are...

I have a few thoughts on why this might be case. Niche protection issues would be my guess. Magic + swordsmanship? I've regularly heard it said that in every Star Wars Game you need to either have the PCs all be Jedi, or none of them be Jedi, and "overshadowing the others" is a commonly stated...

No. they aren't. They are the focal point around which the game, in a mechanical sense, revolves. No matter what their background, history, or purpose, the game is, ultimately, about the PCs, not the NPCs. Detailed options that are available to them on a regular basis are superfluous or...

I say, "You can't. Sorry." The role of NPCs and PCs is fundamentally different to the game experience. NPCs are either allies and force multipliers for the PCs, or they are opposition, or they are representative of the teeming mass of demihumanity which makes up the common clay of the setting...