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I think, it kinda is. Expending a valueable resource, only for it to have no effect for no fault of your own, I'd say, is annoying, yeah. There's only so much randomness you can introduce before things go sour. Making a really hard-hitting option really hard to use works well for videogames...

I'm not talking about "damn, this story sucked". I'm talking about "damn, we could have all this cool gameplay, but it didn't happen". The players, in my hypothetical example, didn't break into the house because they had their cool gameplay of sleuthing, and then decided to act on the results...

Regardless of my very low opinion on 5e, it still is a roleplaying game and... ...the way I see it, combat in 5e (or any other game with a dedicated combat sub-system) is just an extended resolution mechanic. "Disarming a trap is resolved by rolling dice" isn't any less detached from what...

I was talking about a hypothetical situation where there's this whole investigation that would under other circumstances be a pretty huge portion of gameplay, but was trivially won by a chance instead. It's quite different from a single trap

I don't think it's irrelevant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't gamism about deriving satisfaction from getting your skills tested (to the point where more, harder challenges can be considered are reward in of itself)? I don't see how succeding by a mere coincidence scratches that itch.

Only if there was a plan to begin with. Consider a hypothetical situation: the players are rooting out a spy that assassinated their ally. They have a list of, say, eight names of people who were seen around the victim at the night of the murder. They don't know anything else yet, so they...

If you won and it was a satisfying challenge, yeah! If you won "cheaply", then that's disappointing.

While I do agree that DooM 3 is a bad shooter, I think it's a pretty solid first-person horror, while DooM 3: BFG edition is still a mediocre shooter and pretty bad horror on top of that.

Maybe, but you won't, if you don't just mash a bunch of mechanics together. I think it's pretty self-evident, especially in the context of TTRPGs. The "baseline" form of a roleplaying game, slovesochka, freeform roleplaying, negotiated imagination, whatever you may decide to call it, allows...

Alternative title: "Well, it makes sense" makes no sense This is a continuation of my musings on "disconnected mechanics" in another thread, but you don't have to dig that stuff up. Maybe I'm talking about completely obvious things, but the last few months I feel like my whole paradigm is...

Specifically encumbrance, in my opinion, should be designed around the idea that you can't carry e everything you'll need. Well, if you have encumbrance at all. A meaningful choice is, first and foremost, a sacrifice. If tracking a resource doesn't lead to sacrifices, then you can safely ditch...

Well, it depends. Do the benefits of tracking the resource outweight the tracking itself? There's this category of resources that are just annoying and don't do anything — and this isn't endemic to TTRPGs, vidyagames have them too: hunger in Fallout: NV, weapon condition in Dark Souls...

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I'll post a proof-of-concept game soon-ish (probably around a week or two), as well as try to structure the whole idea better

Designers and scholars, way more knowledgeable on the topic than me, are yet to agree on what a "game" even is and how it differs from "play", so I can't speak with any certainty on what is an "essence of a game". I don't know, and, frankly, don't care. For me, for a game to feel like a game...

The G part of RPG can be packaged into the resolution mechanic, creating a strong whole, while separately both are weak. And even if it's not really a game, I don't see a problem with that. I, personally, adore Blades in the Dark, but I'm not entirely sure how much of a game it is: after all...

Oh, certainly it isn't the best approach. It's just one I'm most enamored with. I'm a radical at heart, and I prefer jumping all the way in and then backing up (down? I'm not sure how this verb is constructed) a few steps rather than incrementally move forward. Yeah, pretty much, but D&D...

At any given moment, anything you can do has the same chance of success, that's what I meant. Yes! And when backed against the wall, you can decide to fight, knowing full well that it'll create more problems than it will solve (or that this time, it'll actually work). Trying to apply your best...

I'm not entirely sure the difference between a task resolution and conflict resolution actually exist, to be honest: it's just a matter of scope. Regardless, it's not important here. I'm talking about both. Imagine a hypothetical system: There's a player who controls a single character, and...

I've pondered about decoupling outcomes from the fictional situation quite a bit, but never really had an opportunity to crystalize it into words, and it seems reasonaly relevant to the thread, so why not do it here. I've come to a conclusion that I, contrary to what I thought, actually don't...