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This actually goes off on a tangent. I have argued elsewhere that it's not only not coincidental that RPG play focuses around combat, but that it is almost impossible for any sort of crunchy social RPG to focus on anything else. This is because combat has some unique features that makes it...

One problem with this argument is Heroes of Might and Magic IV is a single player game and tabletop RPGs traditionally have at least 2 participants, and usually have more. And the original author here I think gets it entirely wrong when he pauses to think about this. The problem is not that a...

That would actually be congruent with early industry practice where non-interactive automated background processes were described as 'daemons'. Windows perhaps wisely renamed these as 'services' or TSRs (terminate and stay ready) about the same time as the occult scare was going on, but the...

I agree that they aren't "necessary" but I'm in the midst of running a long campaign for the first time in a system without hit points, and wow do hit points make life as a GM much easier. That ablative plot armor is almost better for GMs than it is for PCs because it allows you to prepare and...

Interesting, but I don't think entirely fair or accurate.

In my games, family and community are very important to a dwarf and they are buried prominently according to their station. There would typically be a "Hall of Kings" located in the dwarven common area where the mighty kings of old were entombed in splendor as an inspiration and lesson to the...

Funny, because I've been playing D&D for 40 years now and my prep is mostly, "What is the world up to?" The most efficient prep is always: a) What have the NPCs done. c) What do the NPCs plan to do. d) What resources to they have to accomplish those plans. And there you go. You know how to...

I don't think that's fair at all. This is very much a world building info dump it's just a very well thought out one as opposed to a strawman example of bad world building. The opening crawl truly begins with a fairy tale introduction, but with a well-conceived twist. This isn't merely far...

No, it's a good example because that's about how big you want your first info dump to be. This is the first lore dump for my last D&D campaign. It's a little wordy, but it conveys some important information about the setting - for example that goblins and hill giants aren't necessarily just...

Since you know the code of Nethack you also know it lacks semantic webs, knowledge graphs or any of the "tools that are used to capture understanding" so bringing up these things are total red herrings. Also, articles in English are in fact semantic markers. In some cases they are actually...

Well, I agree with that. Star Wars didn't attract fans by front loading them with a bunch of setting lore. Handing players a sheet of setting lore is probably the worst way you could create fans. Generally, in a typical game of D&D, my players first encounter with lore is when we work...

I mean, yes and also no. Let's say we are playing a game of Star Wars. Are the players doing so likely to care about the setting and be into it? Would the aesthetic and lore of the setting be interesting to them? I mean it can't substitute for good gameplay, but most successful extensions of...

Fist, this seems like one of those cases where bad definitions are leading to confusion. I'll attempt as best as I can to concede your definitions for the purposes of communication, but ultimately I don't think they are coherent. I don't think "a set of actions" in this context has a lot of...

Honestly, I've tried to avoid commenting on the video because I think I can evaluate it and well, and I think I can sum up the video with, "I wonder if he wrote a script for the video." I get so tired of this sort of, "It doesn't have to be work!" crap. I can watch Mercer and see the sort of...

Well, also a software Dev, and also have read the Nethack code, but don't agree with you here. You seem to have a very different idea of what it means to have special handling. For example, you can try to 'eat' everything in your inventory, and yes there are specific categories, but think...

I can't evaluate the utility of that until I see your definition. I can imagine for any given concept both exclusive and inclusive definitions that are poorly designed because they miss the central character of the thing and thus allow counter-examples to be made that take advantage of the...

So, I think you do agree with me in this example. If the book is 20 pages long, it won't feel like an RPG. The same would be true of a book that is 200 pages long or even one that was 2000 pages long and supported say 50 different endings (44 deaths and 6 different good endings for example)...

Sure, but we certainly mean something by them. When you or I say "RPG" we generally know we don't mean Monopoly and know also that the hearer won't understand us to mean Monopoly. So while an inclusive definition might be useful, a definition that is so inclusive as to be meaningless isn't useful.

I'd have to think about that. For example, in my first clause I think that I'm happy to remove "properly", because an RPG that requires no improvisation, I think would cease to meet my definition of an RPG and become something like a board game. Nethack and most cRPGs don't have any...

I'm happy to take it further. I have played with high-prep GMs that can't GM because they don't really know how to prep for a RPG and they instead prep for a short story or a novel or whatever. But I have never played with a low prep GM that was worth a dime. An RPG can't properly be run...