Search results

Which is really, really funny, given how many folks have said that simulation would be impossible in a game like the one I run :)

Yes absolutely 100% it could and IMO should be. What's the thing folks complain about all the time with Sorcerer? It's a class with no features, and Metamagic simply doesn't fill the hole. It's entirely because they got cold feet about the playtest Sorcerer. Genuinely, why? The definitional...

Well...it's not really any of those things. I want to frame scenes that inspire the players to take action*, in order to find out what that action is, and what reasonable consequences should result from it. *I originally wrote "dramatic action", but I meant that in the sense of "significant"...

Well, I've already said that I don't entirely agree with that perspective. That is one thing rules can do, yes. But rules also provide definition to what is actively welcome and wanted. After all, the rules of golf indicate that a high score is bad. The rules of most other games indicate that a...

Of course, "metagaming" is often in the eye of the beholder. I've frequently been told that in standard old-school play, "player knowledge" is perfectly acceptable in nearly every instance, even if the character simply should not know that trolls are weak to acid and fire (or whatever example...

At least for myself, that's why I don't talk about "process" at all. I talk about purposes, that is, teleology: the thing for which a game was designed. Games, by being designed things, are made for some function. Like laws, rules are inherently teleological, they exist for some purpose. Hence...

Aw, have they changed it so much in the second edition? That's a shame. I was hoping for similar-but-even-better clever design but the same commitment to, as has been mentioned above, the crucible of character development. Certainly all of the PbtA games I've played or seen--DW1e, Masks, AW...

Likewise, I have endeavored to cultivate something adjacent to the Golden Age of Islam and the height of Al Andalus, albeit with a couple of meaningful tweaks (e.g., for established cultural reasons, slavery is a VERY, VERY big no-no)....but it's definitely not trying to simulate the Golden Age...

I think this captures my feeling on the subject as well, both as a player and as a GM. As a player, I don't see or feel any difference between "the GM has revealed their notes which say that Pattycakes is behind the door" and "the rules call for a certain procedure, which invites the GM to...

In the system. As I keep saying, over and over again. This isn't some situation exclusively applying to one single group's table. It's the design of the system itself. Something everyone who uses that system has to accept, or go without playing at all. That's literally what I've said from the...

Their mandatory enforcement should be opposed. Derided, hardly, but opposed? Sure. A system which is compatible with such preferences, but does not enforce them, would be vastly preferable. The person demanding that their preferences be enforced, as opposed to those who want as many different...

When it kills dead any opportunity I have to play the games I want to play, I'd say it hurts me rather a lot.

Is there? You've never made room for such a distinction before. Why is it suddenly relevant now? And would you seriously not think that something was wrong if you were " 'winning all the time' because of what [you]'ve done as a good player"? I'm pretty sure you'd find that, as the kids say...

What? Like seriously, what? FrogReaver wants games that HAVE to cater to him. No one playing them can have experiences which avoid catering to that desire. It is hard-baked into the foundational rules of the system. Everyone playing it must always have the risk of completely unavoidable...

Yeah, because the person who thinks recognition and acceptance is good is clearly the villain, and the people who think rejection and exclusion are awesome should totally be catered to at every breath. I'm saying that people being exclusionary and hostile to other people's fun are a problem and...

And they do? 4e is D&D. Objectively, it is. This isn't my decision. It's the decision of the people who are legally entitled to make things called "D&D". If you don't like that, well, I'm sorry, your opinion is factually invalid. You can still have factually invalid opinions. Lots of people...

Well, as I've argued previously in various other threads, I don't divide things in this way. I don't claim my game-(design-)purposes are exhaustive either. There might be other paths I've failed to consider. But these ones are how I see it: Score & Achievement: What maps closest to "gamism"...

They don't get to declare universal truths either. Whether or not they feel like it is D&D, it is. Their feelings are irrelevant to the identity of the thing.

Presented by whom? Further, by your logic, the exact same thing happens in D&D. You can't ever meaningfully eliminate the chance of missing on attacks, hence, you're never rewarded for clever approaches in combat. You can't ever do more than a tiny shift (usually about a 10 percentage point...

Well. I can't say I come to the table with them. But they aren't just talking about their table. They're talking about the game's design. Something that everyone who plays it will get saddled with.