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OK, but calling someone out doesn't make them visible. . . . not that every situation is like this, but there's a big difference between "I know you're there" and "I see you". And that can make for some incredible suspense. It's giving up a lot for the sake of simplicity.

Well sure. Any system can do anything, if you're brave enough. The entire "Social Interaction" section of the PHB* is one page. "Role-playing" is a subsection of that. Playable? Yes. "Combat" get its own entire chapter, though. Many survival mechanics just get single short paragraphs in...

Ha, well, I tend to use colorful language out of habit, to the detriment of discourse. My bad. I mean to say it's very limited. It does exactly one thing with gusto: class-based anachronistic fantasy combat. Everything else is an afterthought. To be fair, it's deliberately designed this...

Well I suppose someone can cast detect invisibility or some such. But once they do. . . then everyone can suddenly see you? No communication or countermeasure needed? Because it says that ends the condition entirely.

Nah. FWIW, I think 5E is fine. I like it fine. It's OK. What I'm getting at is, I DO see why it's successful. It's fun enough. I don't see any reason other than name recognition backed by Hasbro's marketing budget why it so thoroughly dominates the market. Again, it's not bad. It's just...

Because if for no other reason, the quoted language is awfully specific. It's not typically how someone summarizes a concept.

If so then my reaction is "yikes". Not so much the invisibility part than the sheer jankiness of it all. I take it "yikes" is the appropriate reaction here?

I mean, OK? I'm about to rant here so heads up -- I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at the AotW folks. (ahem) I couldn't give an unwiped kobold's arse whether you own the trademark or not. There's a very simple solution to all this: If you're such hot stuff, make your own damn IP. Rename...

How does an enemy find you if you're invisible? Like if one uses detect invisibility, then everyone can now see you, no communication needed? Anyway, this is likely to get refined through editing and playtest. I wouldn't put much stock in a pre-release verbal explanation of anything.

GM's call, but that's a cop-out, innit? If it's my game, without checking the MM for clarification, my default assumption is that special powers can be turned off "at will". So "singing badly on purpose" is just a variation of turning off the ability. An ability you can't turn off more fits...

I'm not sure "it gets easier after a lot of practice" is a point in its favor. One could argue the same thing about flying a spaceship. Do TTRPG newbies find PbtA intuitive? As in, is it easy to pick up if you're not deconditioning yourself from years of D&D? It's an experiment I can't...

I don't own the place but I ask you refrain from talking like it's "those people". There's nothing at all unusual about what's going on here. The explanation is very simple: Con artists trying to ride dead people's coattails. TTRPG publishing has very low cost of entry; there's more content...

It's extremely disingenuous and they know it. They're using AI regardless so consumers don't have a choice. Whether this is accurate or not is immaterial; it's a perception they're gaslighting into reality because they have the resources to do so. We need to call AI what it really is: a...

Fair. I ain't saying it's the way it should be, just how it be. ;)

Well, you're probably going to get a lot of varying definitions. For me it comes down to, how long does it take to resolve a situation within the rules. A "crunchy" system will involve some combination of: Frequency of needing to look up rules Length of time needed to read a rule Time needed...

Yeah, it kind of rankles to hear 5E described as "rulings not rules" when I use a spreadsheet to track my PC's abilities -- and it's a melee build! It's a pretty bureaucratic system. D&D is not "lite", I hope it makes folks happy to see me write that, but FWIW. . . I don't care? I don't care...

Oh gosh, never played it myself but some time ago I did read a favorable review of an extremely crunchy indie dungeon crawler. I realize the word "crunchy" makes some people flinch but as I've been saying, like Oregon Trail or survival horror, the detail is the point. You're supposed to feel...

IIRC you'd write down stats for weapons you were proficient with, whether or not you had them, because there were only so many. Often times I'd play a fighter that was proficient with club, because you never knew when you'd have to bludgeon an orc captor with a femur. Point is, yeah, most of...

Right, which is why I agree with what you said earlier about how D&D isn't really what it's presented as. There's much more to the difference between AD&D and 5E than tables and lethality. Whatever anyone thinks of AD&D1/2, the dungeon mattered, as in it demanded your attention, whereas by 5th...

I think that's a genre vs. expectation thing. To your point, yes, D&D5 fits firmly within the loose definition of "dungeon crawling" genre in that many adventures take place in "dungeons", a misnomer D&D itself created. But anyone time-warped from the AD&D days might be shocked to see how...