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These were very generalized recommendations. They refer to the difficulty of the module like the difficulty of a wargame scenario (map setup) or a computer game level (area). They also refer to how many PCs and of what ability (class level) should be appropriate. So 4-6 Players (single PCs) of...

Remember to change your thread tag to 3.5 if you're only asking about that ruleset. Makes things easier when scanning this forum. Thanks !

I forget to add that in B2: Keep on the Borderlands, the Keep is Lawful, the surrounding Wilderness is Neutral, and the Caves of Chaos are Chaotic in alignment. All of them count as groups of populations living together, but how they live is what matters. Alignment is all about behaviors and if...

Groups are usually statted up like individuals, but in aggregate. The less they self-organize, the more conflicting/opposing they are in their actions, then the more they are chaotic in alignment. Abilities are lost as a whole, but retained on an individual level. For example, a city could be...

FYI, D&D is designed based upon wargaming theory from the 60s and early 70s. All of which has clearly been expunged from the hobby and none of which you could ever find in the Big Model. That model isn't even about games, but collaborative storytelling.

Read up on Cooperative game design. It's how D&D was originally designed. Every player for themselves and rewarded individually, but learning how to work together and slowly trust each other. Cooperative games are trust games after all. "Don't Split the Party" was play advice. So was how to...

I believe it is you are nurturing a mental framework unknowingly in Group C. Groups A & B simply have different ideas of what to expect from a game, expectations having nothing to do with "true nature" ideas. D&D is a game, not collaborative storytelling. Group B sounds raised on the latter...

The game uses labels referring to an actual design. There are actual pieces and a grid in the pattern which is the chessboard and pieces. Maybe a chess king may resemble a person who's king , but it's not what is being referred to. It's to the piece in a game. Same as a troll in D&D. Treating a...

I've looked at it before. It's a "skill check game", i.e. a "Check game". In other words, a game based on a mechanic that is in no way a game mechanic. There are no such things as "checks" in games. But those are only some of what the text calls its "system". It actually does include pieces...

That's great news. That's not what I was told repeatedly from people on that site 10 years ago. You know, that's really funny. The reason I first heard about the Forge was as part of a story about some crazy guy online who was claiming all games were actually just "scenery shifting" (and wasn't...

It is literally true it must be part of the pattern designed. As I've said before, if something is not part of that game system, the rigorously balanced dynamic design the players are actually supposed to be playing, then it is up to the players. They still need to add material that is actually...

In D&D the players are capable of gaming the system. Their decisions go directly to it, even if at all points they are unsure what what choices are immediately available. They are always working on suppositions, but they are seeking to discern the code as much as game it. "There's more mountain...

That's exactly what the borders are for the Big Model. In it, Tetris is scene shifting to create a narrative, or some such BS. Roleplaying is treated as a synonym for storytelling by that crowd. Not performing a social role. Games are simply patterns existent in the world which we treat...

If Wittgenstein included the mind as part of The world in his Tractatus, I doubt it. I feel he was trying desperately to "climb back into the world" with his later stuff. As the references of D&D are as much to imaginings of the Ref as to the board outside him/her, I don't feel there is a...

I wanted to come back and apologize to you. I not proud of the behavior in some of my posts in this thread to you. I understand you have a very different point of view, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't come to this forum. Please do. I'm not saying I agree with you, I think we can agree to...

Well for the first dozen years of the hobby D&D had nothing whatsoever to do with stories, but was a game. That it was terribly dysfunctional under 2e and then dysfunctionally designed, however well-meaningly, and then finally dropped from the D&D brand altogether doesn't mean D&D the game...

I think we're working from different vocabularies. That's why this thread might be useful rather than perhaps a "calling out"? What you are quoting is strategic advice for the players. It's like reading a strategy guide for Chess or any other wargame. It's isn't rules, but helpful insight for...

Do you remember the debate on these boards about 10-12 years ago about how the basic act of a game was not "resolution"? Where Forgites were spilling "the truth" about how all games were two or more alternative narratives in conflict and all rules were meant to resolve which was selected? What...

As I said, you started this thread. We can talk about how D&D was designed. What games are. Why all the elements of D&D came from wargames meant to enable, not disable strategic thinking by players. What I am not here to do is tell anyone they should or should not have fun for themselves. You...

Gaming and game culture has existed for millenia. That culture is being erased in favor of a fundamentalist one based upon narratives as an inevitability. Games are real, of course. Not fiction or non-fictions at all. The source of a puzzle or game is irrelevant to it being a pattern people can...