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This is proof of my point as to what games, RPGs, and D&D actually are. D&D, if intended to be an improv game was possibly the worst design ever. It isn't one. It's a game. A pattern recognition activity. Don't mistake it's hammer as a bicycle seat. All of those people you quote believe in...

For your amusement, Playing it -> The game of D&D does so -> gives resistance like sports have designs....

The maps on hand, the module published, are not the one's a DM must necessarily use. And you can use the map generators in the game books if those are part of the code you want to use. But as a DM you must select that beforehand. Prepping before a session is just common sense. It takes awhile...

This is the heart of D&D as it was designed. It's also at the heart of enabling players to game D&D as a game, not engage in a collaborative story creation. If you don't know it, that's fine. It was word of mouth when I grew up in the 80's and the expected act of play by DMs and players. It...

You don't seem to wonder why D&D was made at all when a "use no rules at all and make it up game" would have sufficed. The rules are not in the books. Those are guidelines for creating a code behind the screen. Telling a referee to make stuff up makes for a bad game. Except that the players...

Gaming isn't an identity through negation. "We don't seek depiction or narrative design" is Edwards refusing yet again to actually talk about games as understood for centuries. He simply refuses to treat them as a sphere of behavior and understanding we can live within. His answer is "You are...

There is a disclaimer at the beginning of one of the Big Model articles which claimed it was simply theory. But whatever that meant to the community in practice was altogether different. aramis erak's experience and so many of anyone's experience the last decade at places like RPG.net speaks...

Thank you. That's good to know. It sounds like Usenet did what the agenda-driven Forge failed to understand, that reference works are meant to report what people *believe* games to be. NOT what a single "Hallelujah! we found the truth!" one-true-way philosophy purports these "actually" are. The...

Challenging and using metrics to test role playing as games are designed to do is the basis of all role playing games. The quote you give is Gygax's point of view, but there is no contradiction here. D&D as a code breaking game (the very act of game play) tests all these areas of players' actual...

Games are bounded and are played when operated within. Simple enough. Being on a football field doesn't mean someone is playing football. They need to operate in conjunction with the field, a manifestation of the rules, with all the other rules. Just because limits and boundaries of a game are...

So it was said that, A blatant mischaracterization or misunderstanding about early D&D and certainly not everyone's memory of that time. 1970s D&D players were mostly adults and part of the wargaming community. They were hard-nosed, very focused, mathematically literate individuals who probably...

People making up a game and trying out rules on the fly aren't playing a game. That's not some recent observation. That's an understanding that's been around for centuries. Rules are set before play for a reason, so games can be played at all. The DMG is advice to DMs to build their game prior...

Sure, the same way the algorithm underlying Chess has been revealed ...except we still don't know it. We understand it as variations within a repetition. That's entirely false. In the 1980s the majority of players knew the DM was not supposed to make anything up behind the screen.

All the check mechanics of course. Anything where the DM is mistakenly expected to improvise at the table. EDIT: You would never do that in Mastermind, it should be taken back out of D&D.

From stories back in the day, rumor had it D&D was outed as a kids game and the adults stopped playing it out of embarrassment. (But not all did) By '83 it was a the hottest item for children on the market. And not one really had any idea why any of it was as it was. The books presume readers...

D&D isn't superior. It's simply wholly different in both its design precepts and act of play. D&D was like every other non-storygame is designed as. It is about deciphering the code of the rules in order to attain objectives within it. This includes the rules manifested in the gameboard or...

As far as the game, D&D hasn't been D&D since 2000. And back then 2e edition designers were so misguided about its design I don't know if they had any actual understanding of its underpinnings at all. I think they just went along with it as a kind of unreflected tradition. But at least the...

Bottom line, it's up to you, the DM. Conjure means to cast a spell bringing something into existence. Who knows from where? Summon means to compel someone to come to you. They do not need to come from a teleport. Call means telling someone "hey, stop by". There's a chance they won't. And they...

Alignment is a descriptor of behavior. Just like the Ability Scores they are not scripts for the players to perform a personality. Alignment used to shift depending upon the actions the players took with their PCs in the game. Kill enough good people with your character and your PC will become...

Congrats! Good use of tactics, planning before the fight, getting the jump on the foe, fighting the flying creature in an enclosed space, taking away some of its strength for example by spreading yourselves out. And of course getting lucky with some rolls and DM calls. That sounds like really...