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I think it becomes important if you have a system or some rule or what have you whose benefit isn't immediately clear. Though, on the otherhand, if thats the case that could arguably be because the system or rule isn't actually all that good. Sometimes you'll still get that just because the...

I don't think so, at least insofar as what my system is doing. That fixed number is a passive, so if the DC is below it you wouldn't be rolling in the first place. If what the d20 represents in that context isn't clear, despite an included explanation, then there really isn't much to be done.

I would say this is where the issue lies, but not in regards to TTRPGs specifically, but in an error in the framework. The player should be considered as positioned inbetween the Dynamics and the Aesthetics. The player is fundamentally always interacting with the games Dynamics, regardless...

I tend to find it more useful to look at what people care and complain about with different concepts and ideas, as that has tended to reveal the right sort of questions to ask when designing towards those ideas and concepts. Right, thats more or less the same thing. The idea behind an emergent...

This is a pretty perfect distillation of why I've basically written off rpg discourse as worthless, insofar as providing insights for design is concerned. This is correct. The point of an emergent story is that the story is being made through play. The story itself cannot be told until after...

So much stress over this whole storytelling shtick and people wonder why I say the hobby is over obsessed with doing so. These games become a lot less stressful when you let that go and just play to play. Virtually every RPG, even your narrative games, as a consequence, loses much of the...

Then you must not interact with people new to the hobby. One of the most common ways to get someone on board is the idea that they aren't limited in what they can do like they are in video games. Thats been the case for decades at this point, so I don't really buy the sudden confusion or...

Given the most popular game in the world is a rulings game, I don't think I need any particularly extraordinary evidence. An open-ended border (eg what the DM is willing to allow) isn't really a border, because we can't make generalizations about what a generic GM would or wouldn't allow, as...

I cannot fathom how you could have possibly interpreted what I said any other way. Aka, the games aren't actually designed for what they're being pitched as. I never said anything relating to what a given game is about. You can't claim that its only what you were talking about only to...

FKR and its derivatives for example, as well as any game that adheres to a ruling over rules framework. Then don't respond to me as though you think thats what I said.

That doesn't stand up to scrutiny; the burden of proof is on you to show that a given person is being unreasonable by taking the pitch at face value. Meanwhile, there factually are games where you can do anything, so the pitch is not absurd hyperbole, just because it might be inconvenient...

Im speaking in general about why these issues come about. The idea that RPGs let you do anything is one of the single most common pitches for getting people interested. It doesn't matter if a specific game does this; all of them are being pitched this way by the zeitgeist, and they all get hit...

If a game is being pitched as one where players can do "anything", that game fundamentally is an improv game. But if the game wasn't actually designed to integrate improv, its going to cause problems. We see it literally all the time, and this topic is describing one of those problems. And...

If they also insist on the game being a do anything sandbox, something has to give. But, thats also why the other option is pursuing a true emergent narrative system, rather than the kinda-sorta thing that results from slapping a conventional literary or film plot into whats otherwise a...

Well, that just begs the question doesn't it? The premise here is that there's a problem that needs to be solved; that theres a disconnect between what different Players want out of these games that isn't being resolved through group dynamics or just playing something else. Your question doesn't...

A lot of this argument just highlights why I consider embracing sandbox play so important. And why its so important for sandbox play to embrace the possibility of losing, and for losing to not be the end of the game. It kinda cuts both ways; on the one hand, players, gms and colloquial...

GMs are and always have been Players. Thats true whether you look at the game as elaborate Improv, a board game, or the nebulous non-game-thats-better than those icky board and video games that some people want to believe in. The rub comes from the fact that GMs have a significantly different...

The issue tends to be rooted in the same sort of distrust in the rules of the game that causes fudging and railroading and all that. That and it can also be abrasive if the solution involves making the game break if the GM doesn't cooperate.

Is it really so difficult to just play the game as it exists? Its one thing to want to add to a game, to want to have more things in place to play with, but its another to so consistently reject the game you're playing that it becomes a design trend to try and force the matter.

Its been strange observing people pitch rpgs as games where you can do or try anything and yet simultaneously refuse to run actual sandboxes. Thats where I feel a lot of the railroading behavior is coming from, as a contradiction in expectations. And historically, since Dragonlance there's...