Recent content by Thomas Shey

Well, using OD&D as an example here is setting the bar about as low as it can get. Even a lot of pretty lightweight modern RPGs would consider it woefully incomplete in comparison. You had to really want to be doing an enormous amount on pure judgment calls to consider it complete.

I can do that with one or two numbers, but with others the combination of making them up and keeping them consistent from one session to another is not something I'd be wanting to do on-the-fly/by-memory.

Well, I wasn't thinking of D&D5e because I know next to nothing about it, and most of the games I do GM do not have that sort of quasi-lockstep (and may have non-combat relevant other numbers that have a relationship to each other).

A popular one is engineers who think they understand medicine more than biologists or even doctors.

This is one of the reasons I suspect AI art is going to end up being more acceptable in RPG books than purely AI text; at least at its current stage, I suspect the latter is going to stand out to a lot more people and in an area which is the priority point in buying a game text. (Yes, I know...

That just turns on how much I'm sure someone is going to interact with the NPC in a way that might require some numbers. If that's the case there's no upside from my POV in doing in on-the-fly-and-after-the-fact; I'd probably end up doing more work that way.

That's probably fine if you only think you'll need them once. More than that I'd like a little consistency.

To make it clear up front, contrary to what it might have seemed from my posts, I'm probably closer to Belen in how I approach GMing than, say, TwoSix. As such, I'd find rigidity about classes odder than about races. Barring Earthdawn, classes per se are not things that recognized as actual...

And to the people wanting to play one who want a specific look and feel "Here, play this other thing that seems close enough to me" is telling them what they want and what matters. That's not compromise to them, that's telling them to throw away what are to them, important elements of what they...

I'd say if some of the suggestions ("Let's come out with a way to have one as a stranger from Somewhere Else") is "demanding capitulation" to you, your definition of "compromise" is so rigid it doesn't mean anything.

But they aren't insisting on 100% in some of the cases I saw. Its just that the 1% you're fussy about is also the 1% they are. Your red lines have a gap between them.

As I've noted, I don't think that's the question here. I think @SableWyvern was much closer to it in his post upthread.

Though as a fan of 50's SF movies, that's hit or miss. Modern viewers tend to be a lot more tolerant of Forbidden Planet than Them.

And again, you've suggested player capitulation is a compromise when its not. You really don't get to have it both ways. Either people are allowed to have red lines in their acceptable compromises or they aren't.

No, I think there are people on both sides who think they've suggested are compromises. Its just that the exemplars on the other side find those compromises beyond their red lines. That can happen; where the acceptable limits of compromise do not in fact have any overlap, and as such, are not...