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Whether any given set of players likes the idea of traps that aren't telegraphed in advance is a style question, so I don't think there can be universally applicable arguments for or against telegraphed traps. That being said, there are ways to incorporate traps into the world where the trap...

TomB is correct. One square mile is 27,878,400 sq ft, not 5,280 sq ft. (You can very this with Google unit converter.)

Differing levels of emphasis on strategy and tactics are definitely an important part of the relevant distinction. As they are general terms with their own history of debate over where one ends and the other begins, however, I'm not confident that they make effective labels for a gaming-specific...

That's the relevant distinction for me too. Regardless of what terminology is used, I see the question as whether: (1) players are expected to accept the premise of a potential combat as presented by the DM and attempt to win it after initiative is rolled; or (2) players are expected to try to...

Despite being holistic rather than step-by-step my procedure can be picked apart in the sense that I don't just end up with a decision on when/if the duke shows up, I also end up with decisions regarding the duke's priorities and resources, as well as the effectiveness of actions the PCs have...

I'd be good with a system with a complete set of tools and clear descriptions of what they can do. 5e definitely could be improved on the later count! (The deliberately ambiguous stealth rules, for example, would have been aided by a thorough discussion of the decision points left to the DM and...

My procedure as a DM for determining how close the evil Duke and his scary knights are to tracking down the PCs goes like this: (First, the duke wouldn't be pursuing the PCs adversarily in the first place except in response to actions the PCs took with the knowledge that it might cause the duke...

Interesting! I think we may just have different conceptions of what it means to be "aware of a threat". From my standpoint, if one is sufficiently aware of a specific threat to be taking particularized precautions against that specific threat, that's enough to qualify as "aware" of that threat...

Of course general awareness that any object might be a mimic doesn't make you immune to surprise (even from mimics!). But taking unusual precautions against a specific object being a mimic shows that the character must be aware of the threat posed by that object. The rules are written that way...

The cleric noticed the threat that it might be a mimic, and are taking action accordingly. If they thought it was just an ordinary chest they wouldn't be casting Toll the Dead on it. That's not at all what I said. I focused on specific threats and specific precautions for a reason. If, while...

If the cleric is casting a spell to test whether or not it is a mimic, then I think the cleric has noticed a threat, by definition. As a player, if my character is sufficiently aware of a specific threat to be taking specific precautions, I would not consider it to be a fair use of the surprise...

I voted no. Dread Counterspell could work on a subtle spell if Vecna had some reason to use the ability, but he will not make the IC decision to use Dread Counterspell if he isn't aware IC that the trigger condition has been met. I don't interpret the adventure text as giving Vecna the ability...

This is where I think my earlier post about granularity fits in. Your claim that "it's all resolving conflict" is both true and meaningful at a specific level of generality. At a higher level of generality where differences in types of conflict are the focus of analysis, however, your claim...

To clarify, the original sense you presented for "coherent" was: "having a single unified purpose and direction." (Emphasis added.) I questioned if there was a source for that usage, since I wasn't familiar with a usage of "coherent" that was restricted to unitary purposes or directions. Your...

Interesting--that's not a usage of coherent I'm familiar with. All the usages I know of (other than the scientific definition) are much more general than that, and don't require only a single unified purpose/direction. The closest I can find is Merriam-Webster's usage 3a of "cohere" to mean "to...

Oh wow! You'd let Vecna have the spell slots of a 17th level Wizard before the encounter, and then switch to the new-style statblock for the encounter itself? Normally spell slots spent in advance to shape an upcoming encounter are balanced by the fact that those slots aren't available during...

I was trying to engage with your argument, not the specific terminology, I apologize for being unclear! My point is that having the effectiveness of anti-spell abilities change in the mechanics either requires the table to ignore that change in the lore of the game world, or else to have that...

A dynamic competitive "metagame" for PCs vs NPCs only works at tables where either the lore of the setting is completely divorced from the mechanics, or else there is an equivalent IC metagame.

You apparently use monsters very differently than I do. The way I approach monsters, whether or not a monster is around for one encounter or more than one is not determined when the statblock is designed. Instead, the number of encounters a monster is around for is a consequence of the monster's...

Very true--it isn't new. But it's now much more prevalent. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the changes are a "big deal" to those for whom the changes make the statblocks less useful.