Search results

I don't agree with your experience, of course. I'm just pointing out that I have no desire to engage with it because we just had this discussion recently.

I think a lot of D&D groups DO do that; I simply haven't for the past 15 years or so. But D&D is also famously reticent about explaining clear play principles and procedures, as a result of trying to be broadly palatable to a wide audience. (A fairly conservative audience, to make a periodic...

It didn't tell you what your character felt. It told you what your character was capable of. In D&D, my character might feel like he can run through an orc. But he rolled a 5 on his attack roll. Whether that roll was a failure in physical execution, a failure in will or bravery, or simply...

We already had this discussion in another thread a few months ago. Suffice it to say that playing a character who needs to ask the DM who lives in his hometown or who his family members are is something many of us find deeply anti-immersive. The whole point of being able to say, as a player...

But let's be very clear here. What you want is to have your stated actions and narrations be meaningful (or to paraphrase you here, "the chance of success is affected by what you say or anything the character has done up to this point"). The only way to make this happen is to have your actions...

And just like the posts here, both of you would think the other is missing the point.

I sure don't ignore it. Metagame is too important to the play experience.

My current 5e hack does this. Multiclassing stacks horizontally, not vertically. A character can be an expert3/acolyte3/pyromancer3, but they're still only a 3rd level character. (They only use 3 Hit Die, and their prof bonus is equivalent to a +2.) All characters, both classed and...

Because it's endlessly relevant.

No one said "needed". It's simply a concept that exists, and thus can be less or more.

Why would any of us post on a message board if we didn't have some sense of "ideas matter" and "how we communicate those ideas matter"?

Yes. It's definitely an opinion. Considering the OP called it a "rant" in the thread topic, I would imagine them to be aware of the subjective nature of what they said. :)

The argument between "new things are generally good" and "new things are generally bad/dangerous" is a tension that has existed within humanity since before the dawn of the species. It's not really going away. :)

Me neither, and it's like 8% my fault!

Yes, but the focus was on the conservatism of the player base. And one manifestation of that conservatism is the lack of recognition of what exists in TTRPGs but outside of D&D.

Man, that's a really solid blog. Made me appreciate arguments for high-prep pregen play (i.e. "blorb" play) more than 6000+ posts here did. :)

Believe me, I don't want to have any more discussions of agency. As long as no one asserts my definition is incorrect, we have nothing to discuss.

When I said scenes/encounters could be an "indirect result" of player's actions, that was capturing the idea of the player's action causing a feedback result from the world model.

That sounds like how I run a sandbox, not a "living world" sandbox. I'm trying to drill down as to how my sandbox differs from @robertsconley's "majestic world of perpetual motion" sandbox. And, the difference, to me, is that in a "living world" the world is allowed to "speak up" and put...

It is true, man. Don't know what to tell you. The point of rules isn't to limit agency, it's to codify who has the agency.