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Well, sure, that's how I play too. (Mostly.) I'm okay with players who have a different style wanting more structure, though - especially in combat, where the issue of "okay, what counts as an action" can make it feel safer to stick to a predetermined menu. And even squishy narrativists like me...

Dude, if you can't be pedantic on a forum about imaginary elf games, I don't even know what the internet is for. :D

Sure, but to NotActuallyTim's point, that bit of the ruleset is super fuzzy and doesn't actually scratch the itch of someone who wants a little more crunch in the "Okay, but what else can I do?" department. That seems like a pretty good candidate for some plug-in optional mechanics of the sort...

Imaro: Look, I'm an editor by trade. My entire working life rests on the idea that the words people choose to employ matter. So, yes, I do expect that my fellow posters write with care and precision and thoughtfulness about what they imply as well as any literal meaning they wish to convey. By...

It's very much the point to me! It recalibrates the lens through which we are invited to view the setting. The omniscient text of the game author is giving me "facts"; the voice of the in-world narrator is giving me a specific POV, one which encourages me to participate in the subcreation and...

If I have the right end of your meaning here, I don't think we are in any sort of disagreement. I would be the first to say that a preference is not a virtue - indeed, it's kind of been my unspoken premise on this subject from the get-go. Which was the point I was trying to make, in response to...

If we want this thread to run about nine times as long as it already is, we could start to have a conversation about where the line between "deft pastiche" and "inventiveness and originality" is. Personally, I think trying to draw that distinction is a mug's game. (Again, see Hofstadter...

The minds behind 5e certainly seem, at the very least, to think it's legit - the hardback campaigns all have "how to port this into your homebrew or $OtherSetting" advice. And the previously mentioned Matt Colville is a big advocate of mashing up whatever works for you - it's all over his...

I really like the four-panel landscape screens GF9 has been putting out for 5e - they're wide enough to spread out as needed but can be accommodated at a crowded table, and they're not so tall that I can't reach over to get to the battle mat.

Yes, every first-person narrator is by nature unreliable, because everyone is. That's one of the effects of using first-person. (Now, as you point out, there's a particular trope of unreliable narrator that the label as such is usually reserved for in a literary context, though I'm not...

Not AFAIK, but per my previous, I don't think we need it. :)

I suppose it depends. But there's no reason to assume it does automatically.

I gotta disagree with you here. A narrator who's native to the setting is, to some extent, inherently unreliable - they have a certain point of view, an agenda, a stake in the world. They're telling you, at best, what they know, or what they believe to be true - which very well might not be the...

I can't find the video I mentioned, but here's Ed in an essay from the Realms section of his site: So there you have it.

Weeeeell, I do harbor some doubts that such a ruleset would really eliminate the need or desire to tinker with statblocks, gamers being who we are; nor would I wish for such a thing. Bring on more monsters - monster variants, tough monsters, complex monsters, tough and complex monsters, the lot...

This is confirmed by Word of God, btw, if that matters; El was actually invented, at least in part, so that the information on the Realms was provided from a certain point of view - one that might be mistaken, incomplete, or deliberately misleading. He was a device for DMs to say, in essence...

Thank you, and back at ya. :)

Aw, thank you for your kind words. I'm prone to lurking and assuming I have nothing interesting to say, then deciding I do and, uh, unleashing the verbal floodgates all over the convo. Knowing that something I've spewed forth here is of value to someone else means a great deal.

CapnZapp, I'd like to point out, as gently as I can manage, that your arguments here - which have not exactly been presented in a tone conducive to discussion - hinge on everyone else accepting your personal interpretation of the word "challenge." And yours is a perfectly good and valid...

Incidentally, something that I think deserves some light on it, since variations on it have come up a couple of times in this discussion: Some of the canon-descriptivists (for want of a better term, and by which I mean the folks who don't take a relatively hard-line stance about canon) have...