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You're confusing realism for verisimilutude, which is more what Gygaxian Naturalism results in. And you're also hinging your thoughts on bad games. That doesn't really speak to the value of either thing so much as it does to those games not being very good.

A lot of times thats just code for minimalistic. And I actually wouldn't qualify Dragonbane as being a part of that camp. Dragonbane feels lighter because its in a different genetic strain of games and because it doesn't have near as robust a character definition system as its equivalents in...

Indeed. A lot of designers seem to be too trusting in the idea that Players will know to just say they want to flee, rather than being explicit about it.

Something important to note about Call of Cthulu is that the combat rules aren't there to check a box. They're there to reinforce the theme of the game. The effort to contrive a way to deal 800+ damage to Cthulu is meant to juxtapose with the fact Cthulu wouldn't even be phased by it. Your...

Both of the examples provided hinge their low word count on you being familiar with a full system. For mine, a combatant could theoretically flee at any time, but your Party has to collectively agree to do it together, and in either case they have to reach either C1 or C2. If so, then the...

If rules are interfering with roleplay they're bad rules. The number of them is immaterial.

To be fair, its 158 but mine would qualify if I really cared to compress it further:

Then the point stands. Its not something that happens frequently, there's no specific need to cover it. No reason it can't be in a supplemental, especially if its important to the setting, but nobodies under a delusion that every single possible activity is gonna have a bespoke subsystem. That...

Subsystems exist to support frequent, non-trivial experiences. If a game like that example is supposed to be common, then there should be rules for it. But if you're playing a cyberpunk game, thats unlikely to be something you regularly run into unless its a distinctive part of the setting...

I feel its appropriate to share a quote from this handy dandy Blog. While having a universal resolution mechanic is good to have as a broad tool, when you start chasing Pinky the Magic Minimalism Dragon you eventually start robbing the game of its meaning and depth. You may still find it...

An angle thats worth considering is that having plenty of flavor text (and art) isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you care about firing up peoples imaginations so that they want to play. DCCRPG for example is a thick and pretty dense book. And you could probably distill that whole...

My spiffy idea for Labyrinthian is to take the table of contents and just label it with what to read to jump in, what to read as you need to, and what to read at your leisure. Ie, read pages 5-15, then don't touch the rest of the book unless you need tk or want to. Precisely because I think...

Seems you've never been exposed to any kind of generator.

I don't actually see that as contradictory at all. I think what Gygax was looking to create as a game experience just happened to also be relatively realistic. Its something I've noticed in game design that realism actually lends itself well to being gamified if you lean into it. Like, for...

And thats fine by me. I can see the logic in it even if I don't put any stock in the idea.

To take this comment as an excuse to muse on a something peculiar about how online people tend to react to my game, I spend a lot of time reading different forums and subreddits and what have you. As a would be game designer, I take to heart the advice to stay engaged with your intended...

Theres a difference between saying something serves a similar function, and saying it was designed to do that. If the former was what was said there wouldn't have been a dispute. Nope. The difference is that one is consolidating the necessary information to resolve the action when a DM would...

No, we cannot. Unless, of course, we can be honest that we're just embracing the death of the author and own that we're disregarding any notion that they had a reason for designing in the way they did. ...why are you repeating my point back to me? Thats not what I'm reading. This is what I...