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The sense I get from The Alexandrian is that he's actually talking about prepping adventures with hooks players can opt into or not, but once you have that binary other than peacing out it's going to follow a fairly routine structure whether node based or purely linear in nature. Sure, side...

Sure, but not all traditional gaming involves hooking players or deciding ahead of time how they should approach things or pulling them back on track.

Including NPCs with agenda of their own is not plot. Attempting to decide what player character aims should be most definitely is or what will definitely happen regardless of player character efforts is.

In the same way that it matters to people who wish to solve a preestablished mystery if the GM makes it up as they go or if Brindlewood Bay type mechanics are in use it absolutely matters to me if a GM is attempting to set a player character's agenda or establishing scenario details towards...

Sure, but in no way does that address criticism of the technique from the perspective of don't prep plots - prep situations.

Fundamentally what we're looking at is a matchmaking issue. How much overall effort does it take to find and select compatible people to play the games you want to play. A higher volume player base where a smaller proportion fit the criteria you are looking for can make finding people to play...

So, I do think the rising tide lifts all boats theory within the particular subset of group based archetypal fantasy action-adventure games. So, I know it's true that Pathfinder Second Edition can be selling far more than Pathfinder First Edition while being a much smaller segment. I think the...

One area I think a fair number of people who aren't primarily D&D fans even if they enjoy playing it is the idea that the rest of us are dependent on D&D to exist. That its current boom is good for you regardless of what you play. Anecdotally that's just not true for me. This is not the best...

Apocalypse Keys

What I personally dislike about the above sentiment is that it seems to come from a place of being entitled to someone else's creative labor. I haven't been big on Vincent Baker's last couple projects, but it's not like a waste that he is creating stuff that isn't for me. The Cypher system games...

I see very few people saying that 5e is not a good design - only that the difference between its popularity and the popularity of other very good games is one of market fit rather than design quality. I honestly do not understand why people feel the need to put it over other games. Why it cannot...

Yeah. I would have definitely liked to see it addressed more. I would have at least liked to see a "Come on, you must know he's using you come from one of the Harkonens or the Emperor in that final confrontation."

I'm not sure by what you mean by resolve the white savior issue. Paul is meant to be a prototypical white savior and it's supposed to make us uncomfortable. Do you mean they did not address it on screen enough or cast him in too heroic a light?

These are the questions that I generally want answered and how I usually go about getting answers. None of this is a formal process. Just the type of stuff we do with people before we consider inviting them to our main games. Would you be fun to hang out with if we weren't gaming together...

Let's say we establish ahead of time that if you leave you do not your character to be used in any way. Do you care about the ephemera around the character - love interests, family, mentors, organizations they are part of, rivals, etc. - continuing to be used? Does it matter if those characters...

Why does a discussion about the value of having different sorts of games on these boards always end up in a discussion about how to mass market?

The biggest thing is not taking an active interest in each other's contributions or demanding which exact way someone is allowed to contribute. You should not just be waiting for your turn to speak. Self-identifying with either the setting / NPCs if a GM or your individual PC as a player.

I don't think its dominance is a bad thing. It's good game that has plenty of appeal to folks for good reasons. I do think the cultural expectation that other games should conform to its structure is not great. Like in the board gaming space Monopoly is utterly dominant, but no one expects...

I know I am opening a can of worms here, but I really don't want to play or run a game where players are self-identifying with their characters, or the GM has this sort of pristine vision of the setting (as something that can be "ruined"). Stuff is going to happen in the games I care to play/run...

I don't think there's anything to argue or prove. Just different ways to handle the situation, which should likely be discussed. One of the ways I prefer to approach my gaming is to view everything as shared. That includes the setting as well as the characters. During character creation and play...