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To me, the only thing you need is the task-resolution mechanic because collaborative storytelling is duller than dirt. You need something to break the deadlocks and inject chaos into the game. Given their druthers, most gamers would simply narrate themselves winning all the time with zero...

So how do you prevent yourself from just going beast mode and winning as the referee? How do you maintain that neutral arbiter that's required for these games to work? Yeah, that's almost completely alien to me. RPGs aren't sports or competitions, so there's zero need for scoring or winning...

Wild. I'm literally the opposite. I struggle to deal with rules that are move involved than maybe one side of a sheet of paper. I'd much rather do things ad hoc in the moment from general principles and move on. Any time spent looking up or learning the rules is time better spent on actually...

To me, that sounds like the literal beating heart of an RPG. The game is the conversation. That conversation centers what’s possible in the fiction. That’s basically the one (or one of the few) unique thing(s) about this style of game. And you don’t like that?

As long as that list also included passing off all the overpaid manager’s actual responsibilities to their underpaid staff instead of doing it themselves, then yes.

So you’re a regular referee for RPGs, not competitive, and know something about game design. Okay. So how can you not get that it is absolutely trivial for the referee to be a neutral arbiter? As you said, “It's quite difficult to trust the same entity with playing the opposition and handling...

Depends on the context. OSR game, dying’s easy. 5E game, dying’s hard. Around the gaming table, comedy’s easy. Week six of a three-month tour of the Deep South as a LGBTQ+ standup comedian, comedy’s hard.

Are you generally a competitive person? And have you ever run RPGs?

A recent study shows that “Provisioning decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.”...

The need for people who don't like a thing to try to erase it from existence is always mind-boggling to me. You don't get to control what other people like or engage with. If you don't like something, don't engage with it...don't have it at your table. You don't like it therefore no one in the...

We just finished the last episode. It was a really good resolution. A bit gorier than I like for a detective show, but then most of the Nordic and Tartan Noir stuff might as well be mystery-horror with how gruesome some of it can be. I hope they get another series.

“Thanks for the head’s up. I’ve had a lot of fun with you at the table so I hate to see you go. If there’s anything I can do to make things more fun or engaging for you let me know. There will always be a seat at the table for you.” The reasoning might involve a lot of stuff outside the game...

What do you think you’d need/want besides what’s in the core rules and the Age of Umbra frame?

Same.

That's where I am, too. If WotC does anything with Dark Sun at this point I just want them to open it up to the DM's Guild. The fans will do an infinitely better job of handling the IP than WotC ever will.

Yeah. Like power and money, anonymity reveals more than it corrupts.

Honestly getting to the point where almost all conversation with other humans is either this... Or this... “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” ―Robert E. Howard

There’s no there there. People are freaking out over nothing and making clickbait. Relax. Is the license perfect, no. Could it be better, sure. Is the sky falling, no.

It’s also a non-issue in games with looser initiative like Daggerheart. Once any PC has the spotlight they can just say they’re retreating and so can the rest of the PCs.