Recent content by Thomas Shey

I'm in the weird position that I find Storypath interesting, but have a couple parts of it I just don't entirely buy into. Mind, both can be "repaired" but they aren't tiny parts of the system. Curseborn is very interesting, but part of its basic premise and how that's mechaniced (the way the...

Well, notice my feelings on the second part are less strong than the first. Like I said, it just makes my brain itch in a bad way, but its not a hill I'd die on the way I would for the first. In practice I've seen it damn near treated that way in some interpretations of some game systems.

Arguably from the sound of it, it just reverses the cause-and-effect process, but that sounds like it still has largely the same result.

Sure, but that's not what I suggested. I suggested that a big part of the reason for that is we're dealing with things we simply can't handle deterministically (again, barring just ignoring a whole lot, some of which on some level most people don't want to). I mean you can get into an argument...

And I simply disagree. I think it very much represents those reasons.

I'm not denigrating it per se. I've just got two fairly big issues with it, but they're both from where I sit and don't expect them to matter to anyone else necessarily. At least one of them is a big enough deal I'd have serious problems playing in a game as a player or a GM where they were...

And I think even decision procedure represent things. What they sometimes represent is "we don't really care but need to move on somehow." I fail to believe that's what's going on with most RPG procedures.

I'd also argue metacurrency in some of the mentioned games (FATE and Cortex) requires you to engage with the characters background and personality to gain them, but not necessarily to use them (sometimes you can get more out of them that way, but some uses are nakedly mechanical).

But what is it even representing as a procedure? Even game procedures are there for a purpose. I think if the players responded to it in similar detail, its a perfectly functional approach, and its arguably the ideal games like the Amber Diceless game and its surviving offshoot strive for...

I'd accept that was the case about three cycles of discussion ago here. I don't think so at this point, however.

No, I mean you don't believe its representing a real thing that has a real analog in the normal world. I think you've made it clear that at least as executed in the typical skill system that you don't. So again, as long as that's the case and others do, there's no meeting of minds really...

I've argued this should be something that is considered in virtually any system that has a randomizer in it (though in situations with opposed rolls in systems using those, its easier for people to conceptually engage with). After all, what does that randomizer represent? I'd argue a variety...

If they've got a game that leans into traits that have run out of favor, they effectively have chosen an obscure game. After all, presumably they aren't the only GMs looking for remaining players who are interested in those traits.

That's because you don't fundamentally believe in Intimidation (or I'd assume most other social skills) as a real thing. Without that, of course its going to be alien to you. If you did, you'd presumablyt accept that sometimes the way characters react to things is not in their, or really even...

Then they'd presumably have made the resistance roll.