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Indeed it seems a counterproductive non sequitur. I'm already of the opinion that maximizing plausibility is not what GMs actually do in practice--that instead they aim for preserving a certain "quantity" of it and will accept many options that reach such a threshold. And, because I have been...

Okay. I'm not quite sure what that means, seeing as how I see the three horns as being...pretty clearly problems to be avoided. But I'm willing to listen. Okay, but that...doesn't seem to have taken this horn of the trilemma at all? Like this is just saying "Exposition, and player participation...

Thank you! This nicely captures my concerns here. That is, there seems to be a trilemma here: GM doesn't give detailed info unless prompted by players, which risks "guessing-game" territory GM only gives detailed info about the things she's prepped, which risks "pick your option from the menu"...

I don't see any specific problem, no. But I do think this makes previous hard-line stances kind of frustrating? By which I mean, okay, so this is an example of prepared sequences-of-events that are acceptable to you. Cool. That's a useful boundary condition here. "Something like this is...

Yes, exactly this, this is what I mean when I say the world is inside the GM's black box unless-and-until the GM chooses to inform the players about it, under this approach, as I have understood it. Informed decisions depend on already having a ton of GM work done. Anything that doesn't already...

Are we talking about the same edition? 5e is literally all about the latter over the former.

Well, my idea was that the Warlord starts with medium armor+shield and upgrades to heavy later. Medium armor is perfectly doable at low levels even if you don't have a crazy high dex mod. But I suppose something could be worked out? It's just something where I would want to avoid a "one level...

I'm honestly not sure I can--particularly in light of these recent posts! Is it acceptable to have a planned sequence of events a, b, c, as part of the defense of a location when the PCs visit it? Is that an unacceptable overreach because the GM has laid down a sequence of what will happen? Or...

But Hannah having something she "would like them to continue [doing]" seems to be a pretty big no-no, isn't it, in this context? Like I was under the impression that the GM wanting the players to do anything at all would be unacceptable, outside of sharply limited exceptions (e.g. right at the...

Well, would you say my elaboration on the question demonstrates why pemerton would want clarification? I wouldn't have posted about it if I didn't see a seeming (emphasis SEEMING) contradiction between the hard stance against most forms of pre-planned events, vs the way a sequence of encounters...

I dislike the spell-ification of class features already, so even if it weren't psionics being recast as "it's literally just another flavor of spells", I'd oppose it on those grounds. What I want to see: A mechanical structure which radically differs from Neo-Vancian spellcasting in nearly all...

The problem is that "magic" now means "spellcasting" 90% or more of the time. And "spellcasting" is much more confining, as a system, than many people--WotC included--seems to realize.

I don't think it needs to be 2-and-2, but I certainly agree that a Warlord subclass focused on the combat applications of magic would be perfectly acceptable. For my part, I like the old Warlock split-subclass model, and think that would be an excellent choice for the Warlord. (There's a vague...

The problem, as is always the case with any Fighter sublcass, is that the base chassis is too full of stuff. You can't actually give the Warlord features the room they need to breathe and flex, because "has 4x attacks per round" and "Action surge" etc. is too strong. The old Banneret shows...

Quoting both since these are the same question from different sources. Some of the GMs you describe have instead said the opposite. @Lanefan, for example, was the one who said that no answer further than some variation on "guess you'll have to find out" could be expected for genuinely months at...

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but there's a point I'd really like to see clarified. In the discussion about "bypassed encounters", I've seen several mentions of GMs planning out encounters in advance, only for the PCs to "bypass" them. I don't really understand how that...

I would not expect an answer, no. Even from a GM who was playing above board. I will note that "this module" wouldn't apply because, as others have been quite clear, this form of play isn't supposed to be module-like.

Yes, that would be exactly my concern with something like this.

I was straight-up just told that no, they aren't. That that doesn't come into play. That's why I was making the point in the first place. Okay. I wish my example had met your standards. I have tried very hard to actually tie things I describe to specific behaviors or scenarios, rather than...

I am very glad they're trying. I am extremely upset that them "trying" means...making another goddamn spellcaster. For God's sake, couldn't we have ONE new non-spellcaster class? Psionics was THE place to do it! And I'm very sad that this almost certainly will succeed this time. Hooray, we get...