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I don't know, those people come with all kinds of competition. We have a lot more ways to do roleplaying and a lot more ways to do games than we've ever had at any point in TTRPGs past. Plus, the D&D hegemony cuts both ways; it eats up everyone who plays TTRPGs, but it also becomes the face of...

In genre, "Hero" or "Expert" are both appropriate, but frustratingly generic. You could maybe do something with "lightness" and/or "internal strength" to touch on quigong/neigong.

Remove me a little of Spirit Island's fast and slow powers, though in that game you might deploy a mix of both, and there's only one event turn sandwiched between the fast and slow phase. If the enemy is largely acting fast, going slowly may have an additional advantage on that you're able to...

Surely that could be better achieved then by not writing the feat the way it is? The proposal here is not that the feat grant a new action, but instead it should be understood to mitigate a penalty. There's no reason it couldn't simply have done that, instead of existing the way it does. I...

You've missed the second part of the ask, which is that the penalty be intrinsic to the resolution, thus that resolution is fixed on the GM side, and the player will simply note or ask if their feat applies, and then add it. That is, Coerce could include a modifier or subsystem for affecting a...

I respect the urge to stay out of the OGL topic, but I really don't think it fits neatly in the broader point here. Part of the whole "permissive use of copyright" was an explicit promise not to change that permission. Nerd rage, as you're using it, seems to be about the audience creating a...

I would appreciate this a lot more if it was modular design laid out as a menu of settings, instead of yet more "don't worry, you can just do the game design yourself on the fly" advice. The point about Treat Wounds is great, and an actual toggle setting that laid out the impact and the...

When I was much younger than I am now, I was very confused that "being pedantic" was a criticism. Surely you'd want to know all the details of the thing, and above all, be as right as possible? There was a period I leaned into it as a badge of honor, and developed the prickly, isolating sort...

It's moved on! I usually get told I should play a videogame these days.

That's something you could design around, if you were so motivated. Perception/knowledge being done as defenses is the easiest starting place.

It's a regular source of frustration for me when the lumping/splitting on this issue puts 3e and 4e together here. 4e, especially with skill challenges taken into consideration, is best understood either as a 3rd rail (player action declarations falling outside the rules should generally be...

We fluctuate between 70 and 72. I've never quite understood the time boundaries my parents always had around AC/heating, there was always a big to do around whether "it was time" to turn on the heater or AC for the season. I was honestly surprised to learn as an adult there's no procedure beyond...

That's just a more granular version of LR as it currently exists, right? LR is basically how a 3 hit point tracker, especially if we assume most spell conditions are roughly equivalent to death. It's more flexible, but I think the issue there is that doesn't solve the mixed party problem...

Probably change it out for a flat reduction to damage from spells, which you could increase with CR, and then some variation of "Action: end serious condition x/day" and/or "bonus action: end less serious condition x/day." It might also reasonable to make it a reaction or legendary action in...

Honestly, I think the biggest factor is that melee combat is cool, but it takes a ton of contrivance to make it aesthetically reasonable to do. A faux medieval setting is one of the easiest ways to make sure swords are relevant.

You've listed 5 things D&D has historically had tables and rules and laundry lists for. We can quibble about the exact abstraction, but it's clearly not impossible to actually write specific rules for those things. You seem to have defined the design task as the problem here, and then proceeded...

I really hate this attitude, precisely because I feel like it misses other primary strengths of RPGs; they're unbounded in play time, can provide way more points of interaction than a video game, and are very, get way to create new content for. There's plenty of reasons to want to play a TTRPG...

Right, I'm pretty firmly in the "just actually write rules for everything" camp, and I'd argue this is a pretty heavy yoke on that kind of design. You're talking on extra design work for a return that at best exists entirely in your own head, and at worst, actively makes a player have a worse...

This is usually an adult conversation moment for me, and it really depends on the the background of the game in the first place. Am I pitching these players on some theme/setting concept I like? Then I'm probably going to want to be persuaded that this character will support that structure in...

Why would you include options that can't hold up to a cost/benefit analysis as player facing material? If you consistently make say "losing your actions" the risk of using a mechanic, players will not engage with it and you've wasted your time designing it. I'm all for a transparent, fixed...