zarionofarabel's latest activity

It me. How many variants are enough for you people?! <yells at cloud>

I think genre conventions, setting knowledge, and the like, does play a part. Social conflict in particular, however, seems to rely...

Or which Anime/Movie/Show they most recently watched/Book they read/Philosophical Treatise they're interested in?

So... the idea of "Skilled Play" is ultimately a false canard. There's no such thing as being 'skilled' at playing D&D of any edition...

I think "skilled play" is just the players understanding the idiosyncrasies of the GM.

Which is totally superfluous to whether or not social or combat encounters be decided by GM fiat. No matter the stakes, GM fiat deciding...

Right. But if the roll is for intent, then the outcome you want matters.

Yeah, I mean, I would question what the player is trying to achieve by kicking the guard in the nuts. There are certain goals to which I...

Avoiding the combat would be avoiding the check in the first place, it would be avoiding the social interaction. The outcome of the...

Exactly. The referee makes a long string of decisions to determine basically everything except what the player decides their PC does...

I encourage the players to be clever, outwitting the challenges that I present to them, sometimes anti-climactically. eg, totally...

The DM decides if a roll is needed/possible, and if so, what the parameters of the roll (difficulty, consequences for failure, etc) are...

Well, this is where success and failure without a roll comes into play. DM discretion is baked into the mechanics, so the mechanics...

In essence, yes. While this is an extreme example, it could be done. That would be one way to do it. True, but also potentially doable...

All things D&D. Old D&D. New D&D. Especially professionally published D&D with someone's houserules. Wow am I tired of "the next new...