Search results

So you sometimes defer to your players, or expect the GM to defer to you as a player? How do you avoid abuse? How do you ensure only acceptable outcomes? You've just made the GM not the single central and final authority. Something you've insisted is required, many many many times. Now you're...

Still doesn't make them data. They're self-selected, which means you can't separate them from their prompting. Or, if you prefer, statistics require us to divide by (N-1), one less than the sample population. If your sample size is 1, that means dividing by zero. I think you can see why that...

And even when it is among good, close friends, rules are not some horrible affront. I mean, obviously a crappy rule could be such. Bur rules in general are tools. Even among close friends, they can be useful tools.

More or less. Not at all. Several OSR-adjacent folks on this forum (some of them participating in this thread!) have made very clear just how horrendous an affront it is for a player to put even a single toe out of line.

Likewise, I previously had someone working on a JD degree. I don't...do law stuff really. But law stuff comes up in a social context, frequently. It was quite clear that this player had issues with some things like contracts or enforcement or the like. He kept his peace, but the occasional scoff...

Precisely. It would be like an employer, where the only response the employees can give to not getting paid for their agreed wages is just quitting the job and walking. No accountability. No restitution for unfulfilled promises. Nothing punitive at all, except "game ends." And because we live...

How do you have conversations with people you like spending time with (such as friends or your significant other) without them becoming acrimonious arguments when you disagree about something? Exactly the same things. You lay out your stance openly and earnestly, you show respect for the other...

And I argue every unwritten rule will be broken. Especially in an environment where it is one specific person doing the breaking, when everyone else is incredibly tightly bound by hard, explicit rules.

The fact that that isn't established in the fiction yet...? People don't get to declare anything just because they feel like it. That's literally not following from the fiction. Doing precisely the opposite, in fact.

I have very, very little patience for invocations of "social contract" as though it provided anything at all. The social contract is invisible. Its contents are changed on a whim when one person has all the power and the others have functionally none other than "flip the table and burn the...

Well, the rules explicitly say that you have to start and end with the fiction. Over and over and over. It's....literally the explicit text. I'll be using Dungeon World, of course, but it's functionally equivalent to other PbtA games on this. DW also includes things like "you have to do it to...

Why? You've always said the power is absolute and that no rules, whatsoever, can ever limit them. Social contracts accomplish nothing when someone can do whatever they want. That's the whole point.

Because those points are 100%, absolutely, completely useless other than to permit you to swing a weapon MADE OF MAGICAL ENERGY. I thought "realism" was supposed to matter.

So "except for nothing." Good to know.

Nope. And if this is how you're starting, I'm frankly not going to bother reading the rest. It won't lead to anything productive.

Then you have heard completely incorrectly. Like I have no idea how you have come to that conclusion. At all.

I mean, I can certainly agree that mistakes occurred. I don't necessarily think this is the one involved here. I actually really like the idea that Warlocks can summon whatever weapon they like and use it (without Fighter-type features like masteries, of course--just the weapon and no more). It...

I played a playtest 7 Warlock prior to the full publication of 5.5e. I used a greatsword--as many, many warlocks did before, because warlocks can't use shields and thus have no reason not to use them. And then Strength requirements came along and pretty well ruined that. Yes, I'm salty.

People have been so keen to make absolutely clear that the rules are utterly subservient to them, not the other way around. When the rules thus only tell you what results occur, and the GM is--as we have been so clearly, consistently informed--utterly free to ignore those rules whenever and...

Except that you, as GM, can do whatever you want. That's been repeatedly reiterated, remember? The rules are your slave, not the other way around. You can do whatever you want. That was the whole point you and others were absolutely insistent upon. So you can declare whatever you want. The...