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I settle for generic resolution (GM picks difficulty from scale, player rolls appropriate modifier), because it's what's taken over the zeitgeist post 5e, and I'm not going to persuade my players into a different play loop at this point. I want a game to strive for action completeness. Ideally...

I generally view this as a cure worse than disease scenario. The critique that a player might not know or understand the board state (the presence of absence of cups) and worse that the GM might be deciding something consequential (or more specifically, "more consequential than the player's...

I would love to see it all go a step further, with the party as the ultimate, collective agent as the norm. This point is mostly orthogonal to the broader conflict, but while I agree with you about most of these points, I wouldn't yield the point about intent; that leads to negotiation, which...

Actually, if this was a temporary class you eventually replace, it would be a great model for stat fixing, if you wanted to use rolled ability scores. Write in some ability score increases that are capped based on the standard array, so you can spend a few levels building into a Cleric.

That's just ridiculous on the face. GMs sign up for all kinds of constraints, and clearly go out of their way to design entirely new constraints for themselves. "It's not possible for a person to accurately use simulated causality consistently as the basis for their decision making" as a...

I'd focus on flexibility, and reactive abilities. The everyman fantasy is mostly about surviving when you shouldn't, paper with having narrative events compare to give you a chance to succeed/grow. I'd want to avoid giving this class traditionally structured abilities, instead letting them make...

Yeah, I like a certain degree of technical manual to my fantasy.

I certainly couldn't do it. Superhero settings just crumble under any examination, I struggle to maintain the correct mindset. There's just never enough there, when you've got the whole palette of gameable interactions instead of consuming media that's already been cleaned up to fit the right shape.

I mean, this is always the problematic bit. It being inevitable doesn't make it any more desirable, and getting told you should simply get over it to find some other enjoyment comes off rather like telling someone their interests are childish and shallow. I can see the case for trying to get the...

I'm mostly just annoyed that design and creative authority are so closely linked in the zeitgeist. I want more complete and better thought through rules, I'm simply not interested in compromising the "model an interactive fictional world" design goal, and hover between disinterested and confused...

I've always just leaned in and assumed the mechanics do what they say they do. Fighters jump off cliffs. It's easier to reify the mechanic as a setting norm and move on. I don't disagree. I think a lot of the contention that they only work in limited environments (usually dungeon crawling)...

Right, I'm definitely diverging, mostly I want to point out this isn't a discussion with binary poles. That being said I think it is important to clarify a difference in orientation here. I need the PCs to have complete knowledge of their own abilities, not of the situations they're in. It could...

To be clear, I'm not a PC vs. GM guy, I don't view that relationship as antagonistic. The GM is simply responsible for the board state the PCs are acting on. My concern is agency; I want players to have tools they can deploy to get what they want, and not in a weak "had an influence on the...

I'm in favor of very strong rules procedures, especially including skill rules, that are primarily designed for players to deploy against GM generated content. I don't think the question of rules/rulings breaks down nearly on either side of this divide. If anything, I'd argue difficulty...

I'd be a lot happier if the big game hadn't gone so far into generic resolution, it's a real waste of the potential design and publishing power they could be using to put out rules. What's the point of being the biggest game if you're not going to gush forth content? :p

I don't get it because of 5e's omnipresence, but I'd much prefer players report the difficulty to me, or report the levels of effect they can achieve with a given action by reference to whatever the resolution process is. If I've said it's a rough rock wall, it should be within a players...

I'm not so sure those belong on the same scale, given that seems a difference in kind, not quantity. A high agency character might wield disproportional personal power or influence, but still be limited to causally forward facing actions and a personal scope of action. Authors and characters...

I didn't think that's the case. Firstly, because I'm quite bullish on handing resolution off to systems without handing off content, but more importantly because that isn't the design intent. It's not a matter of "owning it," that simply isn't the intended play loop; a GM that judges imperfectly...

That would be a more compelling argument if there was an engine on the other side that offered the same gameplay loop without that flaw. If we have to adopt an entirely different structure of game to avoid it, then you haven't actually offered a solution. Maybe it's a cursed problem, but...

I try not to be dogmatic about it in the TTRPG space, but I don't think you could describe those as the rules to a game accurately.