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That's... Just exactly the problem again, and also seems incredibly prone to negotiation, a thing I think is an unalloyed bad, but opinions clearly vary. I'm proposing instead that after the introduction of an obstacle players be given a knowable amount of mechanical space before their actions...

Right, we should be able to do better than "this isn't a problem" and "this is the solution to problem" as our only points of discussion. Take 10/Take 20 is a perfect example, or you could turn knowledge/investigation/perception into defenses that hidden stuff/information is rolled against...

I'm a big proponent of Take 10/20, definitely the most maligned mechanic from the era. They cleared up most of the issues of the big D20, while still leaving it open to roll when it was actually tense, and provided a clear way to determine the maximum effect that was possible. But yes...

Technically yes, but the story in that game fits in a postage stamp and is well beside the point. From a gameplay perspective, you are missing literally nothing.

It's great! MT has a higher drive toward "escape velocity" than StS. It gives you ample opportunities to exceed the obvious design tolerances, lots of doubling and potential infinites, and unlike StS it intentionally scales such that you're required to use those tricks. That being said, it is...

I'm coming from a 3e table, primarily. Dice were for fighting and for cases you're forced to use a skill you aren't good at. Nearly everything else came down to creative spell use or invoking a system that output a specific result. There was a lot of leveraging the carry/drag numbers and we were...

That's been a big change in my experience; I started with an understanding that dice are the failure state. Good play involves minimizing their impact on getting to the outcome you want. It's been quite an adjustment dealing with players who actively like gambling.

I can't help but think PF2 really didn't understand the value of defaulting mechanics like Take 10, I suspect largely as a result of writing generic scaling difficulties into skill resolution. There's nothing wrong with riskless mechanics, but it's obviously bad to make them time consuming to...

Intent is expressed through action declaration; the process outputs a climb speed, which a player uses to change the situation somehow. The roll can only tell you about the results of a fixed process, the interaction of that process and the situation determines if intent is realized. The mistake...

This is the most effective summary of the divide I've read, on both points. Tying complication to mechanical interaction, instead of originating outside of interaction is the baseline point of incompatibility, and the point about competence is a good articulation of how I've always felt engaging...

I'm deeply skeptical of every attempt I've seen to marry gamist and narrativist mechanics. Narrativism seems to thrive when the act of resolution is fundamental uncertain; you're rolling dice because you want system input on how something should be. Gamist concerns are much better served when...

I don't think negotiation and iterated gambling are enough to hang a game (in the strong sense) on. You can do risk management well, but only if you settle it in a web of other supporting systems that provide a lot of agency to manipulate outcomes. There's more than "having the appearance of a...

I'd argue that's a pretty shallow way to look at "gamism" (a term I'm frankly pretty suspicious of in both the GNS and GDS senses). See, my critique of 4e is that it was not especially gamist, particularly outside of the crunchy combat; the skill system was a step toward generic resolution...

I'd argue that's more because gamist games have largely faded out entirely over the same period, or shrunk in scope to narrowly defined chunks of gameplay. Mostly I think those players have drifted off to board games.

Personally, I think Perception (and perhaps more controversially, Knowledge) clearly should be defenses. Hidden creatures or things (or unknown relevant details) should be rolling against PCs, and offered up immediately if they fail. Edit: But I also think an appropriate reward for investing...

I think I've explained myself poorly, that's my point precisely. There isn't a standard we've agreed on, and energy/design work is spent largely on pursuing new models or smashing together favored mechanics, instead of iterating on a fixed set of design goals. The framing of "modern design"...

There's an implicit assumption in here that I spend most of my time with RPGs (especially "modern" ones) beating my head against. There's nothing inevitable about the current set of design norms, on either "side" of this whole discussion. I don't need to submit that players should ever have...

This is the sort of thing I'd put cleanly in "rules" or "system" instead of GM guideline. The expectation the players have (not unreasonably) is that they should be able to express agency before consequence pins them down entirely. It shouldn't be incumbent on the GM to redesign the game on the...

I think that rather necessarily simplifies that "resolution" down to a pretty limited play space. Hard to have a seven step plan if you're inventing the opposition one step at a time, though I don't know if I've seen a game that actually separates content creation and interaction into separate...

Right, it's very clear you don't value those distinctions, but like, it's pretty obvious to me that those aren't the same things? I would make different choices of my primary goal was moment to moment presenting interesting things the table would enjoy, than I would if I was trying to create a...