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Because "the system is designed to create dramatic story arcs" and "the story arcs are planned in advance" is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Infernis could definitely be used for White Court vampires or Red Court infected; full Red Court and Black Court should probably be restricted to antagonists. Werewolves (like Billy and gang) might make sense as a reskinned class/subclass, more than an ancestry. A Loup-Garou should definitely...

I would probably make them Grimm-style Wesen. A small percentage of the population (like 1-2%) are fantasy races, but they can all maintain a glamour to look and feel outwardly "human". The rare humans who can see their "true form" (which would be PC humans) might often be mistrusted or...

I mean, I don't think it's particularly controversial to point out that for D&D, or at least traditional D&D (3e and before), the point of a roll was to determine the outcome of a process, not the realization of an intent. The core of that play is DM presents obstacle, player uses...

Sentences 2 and 3 don’t make sense together. If the world is “independent” of the PCs, then what monsters leap out is dependent on the world, not the PCs.

I'll invite the hate and just say I love the art and the overall trade dress of the original 2e books (revised, not quite as much) compared to the 1e core books, which I find pretty offputting.

Oh, for sure. I've run into people with those play priorities before, it's just completely antithetical as to how I play. Fundamentally, I'm playing to generate conflict (in the narrative, not table conflict!), not to have my character succeed. "Play your character like a stolen car" was...

It's fine to disagree. But I'm not calling anything the "one true way", I'm defining my own usage of the terms. Which I said myriad times in that post. Seriously, read all the words in my post. I (notice the "I" there, it's very important) think that there are important distinctions between...

That's what I said in the second sentence. "I don't enjoy trad style games because I don't trust DMs to have that authority". Ergo, the reasons I don't enjoy trad games lie elsewhere. That @pemerton is not a large fan of trad-style games is not in dispute based on their own postings saying as...

The problem with 1e bards wasnt really the design; it was the horrible AD&D dual-class rules and the general AD&D desire to punish characters who wanted to be interesting and change themselves midstream (like with XP penalties for alignment change). If I ran a retro AD&D game, multiclassing and...

Hey, I'm reasonable a solid 70, maybe 75% of the time. :)

"I want the DM to have limited authority because that makes my playstyle work better, not because I don't trust the DM to have that authority. So please stop saying I don't enjoy trad-style games because I don't trust the DM."

Yea, I agree with this. If the players and DMs agree to a campaign framework, then the players should be able AND willing to make characters to strengthen that framework. If the campaign framework is just "standard D&D", then sure, I can understand (and I share) the desire to play a concept...

If I was making the game, I would lean in to the Jedi Survivor playstyle. Make a defined protagonist who's a bladesinger, or some other existing gish variant (hexblade?). Lean into the D&D brand identity with spells and findable items, and set it on either Faerun, Eberron, or Planescape...

I feel seen! :)

It very much depends on your own particular psychology. Those of us who are fairly math and rules savvy are probably more likely to notice the d20 rolls that miss by 1. And we'll notice every time we roll damage because it's one less than it "should" have been. Likewise, some people won't...

To me, or at least how I've normally seen the term used (with the enormous caveat of my normal doesn't match anyone else's), "players drive the direction" is a bit too broad. It basically just divides games into 2 categories, sandbox and module/storypath (where the game is driven by the...

I didn’t start playing until 1990, so I have zero nostalgia for 1e. But I would definitely consider picking up a thoughtful, thorough 2e retro clone.

I’ve definitely used some Fate ideas in my D&D after reading and playing FATE.

That would be hard, because I don't think any TTRPGs are "incompatible" with each other. They're just different from each other. Similar terms that have different use cases in different contexts should be discussed so that everyone can understand the contexts. Which is what we're doing here!