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But even then, if I as GM want to modify the difficulty, it's counter-intuitive. "I want to penalize this roll by 20%, because it's 20% more difficult than normal." Counter-intuitively, you either have to subtract 20% from the target, or raise the roll by 20%. If I want to make something...

For me, "Roll Under" systems make it massively more difficult to establish the difficulty of the task at hand as something that's objectively part of the "game world" and not a mechanical artifact. It's the big problem I always had with GURPS. It never felt like doing anything that happened...

I could easily run a fantasy action / adventure campaign for at least 2 years with nothing but the 208-page Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition core rulebook. It wouldn't even be that hard.

I live near Seattle. I can occasionally find decent deals on smaller venues for that price. For example, just looked it up, you can get general admission tickets for $35 to see They Might Be Giants in Chicago later this summer. But for bigger name artists, yeah, the days of a $60 ticket are...

Pretty much agree with most of the sentiment so far. It's only as expensive as you want it to be. At its "minimum viable baseline" of a PHB and a set of dice for a player, the cost-per-hour of entertainment value is massive. Despite having more discretionary income now than I've ever had in...

So to follow up on Fingertips by They Might Be Giants . . . . . If you've never heard the song . . . well, um, yeah. It's the epitome of a juxtaposition. But seriously . . . This is clearly some Star Wars RPG character's life story . . . . Everything is catching, yes Everything is...

So Particle Man really needs no introduction . . . He's just doing the things a particle can. Totally a villain or superhero, probably in a post apocalypse nuclear wasteland. I love the idea for Undone --- "If you want to destroy my sweater . . . Watch me unravel", I think it would be a...

Particle Man or Fingertips by They Might Be Giants. Undone by Wheezer For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield

Microtransactions are coming. Really, you should plan now to embrace this reality. The whole point of a digital VTT of their own is to monetize transactions. And I don't blame them for it. So, I'm a mid-40s GenX gamer who's way into TTRPGs, CRPGs, FPS games, and sports video games. I just...

My experience with D&D 3 / PF1 for 9 years was a long procession of watching players engage in these same kinds of "hijinks" for much the same reason --- they just wanted something interesting to happen. This was one of the major reasons that led me to look away from D&D in the 2010s. No...

And that's all cool and groovy, man. Just recognize that Dungeon World specifically and Powered by the Apocalypse generally isn't that kind of game. Actively choosing to play Dungeon World means actively choosing not to GM in the manner you're describing.

I generally agree with this, and would point to "Discern Realities" as a move to invoke in the face of an action declaration of, "I search the room for a secret door." In my mind the assumed situation is, whether declared by the player or not, "To better understand the situation of how monsters...

It's a function of how loosely held the GM's ideas about the world are. The narrative dice mechanic naturally pushes against some aspects of holding tightly to pre prepped material. It's not as heavy a pushback as PbtA, but it's definitely there. I felt exponentially better prepared to run FFG...

The second resolution axis (advantage / setback) seems to be a huge sticking point for GMs who struggle with improvisation and/or reimagining scenes/setting/framing to represent the die results. Trad GMs who instinctively treat their prep/ notes as gospel and not subject to change /...

Whereas I GM'd a 6 month Star Wars campaign using the exact system you're decrying (FFG Narrative Dice), and had some of the best roleplaying of my gaming career. It's a fantastic system that's not meant to be approached in strictly "trad fashion". If you get what it's trying to do and why...

I think I only have two systems in physical copy on my (very limited) gaming shelf that I wouldn't say, "Yes, I'd run/play that in a heartbeat." I'll hang on to my copy of Mechwarrior 1e soft cover pretty much forever for the lore and art, though I'll never play it. If I was going to run a...

Kind of like how defining X exists in your campaign world when you first brainstormed the setting 7 years ago is no less arbitrary than deciding that it exists 7 seconds ago, amirite? Oh wait, sorry, I forgot. Defining something seven years ago, even if it's boring and of no interest to the...

Doesn't the GM have the option of voluntarily constraining themselves to certain areas of the rules? Of course the follow up question from "trad" GMs is, "Yeah, but why would I agree to that?" The answer being, that you're attempting to try a different play style / play ethos that's in accord...

Emphasis mine. For Neo-trad game design, along with broader narrative-style designs, the "at best" proposition is, Players saying, "But the rules say so!" and the referee responding, "Oh that's right, we've agreed that in regard to aspects X, Y, Z, A, and B, I am just as bound by the written...

"Original Character" Often used (by my teenaged daughter at least) to reference a custom / new character devised to participate in an existing fandom / IP with the characters that already inhabit the fiction as created.