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But the player knows that it is a skill challenge, and if athletics is their best skill they will probably want to roll it six times. (Boring, but optimal.) And ultimately it doesn't matter that much what they do. The goal is to get on top, and six successes will get them there. So they might...

In the real world the courtesy title for the (non-lord) children of lords is "the honourable."

There was a long discussion about this in the giant D&D conservatism thread. Acausal complications might make the player vary of taking actions the character wouldn't. And in some games players can decide stakes for their action declarations, that do not causally follow from the actions of...

And if they do that, weird incentives arise. Many narrativist mechanics allow the player to affect things the character couldn't and give the player salient knowledge that the character doesn't have. This causes the character and player decision spaces to diverge, and now we have the player...

You said characters are not in challenge. Then why are we using challenge mechanics? What does it represent? To me the point of roleplaying games is the fiction, and the purpose of the mechanics is to represent the fiction. If they are not doing that, why are we having them? But it is not...

A lot of narrativist mechanics are like this. The games have weird incentive structures that might disassociate the player decision space from the character decisions space, especially if we assume that the player is trying to succeed, instead of just dispassionately seeing what happens. And...

Dragonborn equivalents (more like dragonborn/lizardfolk hybrids) in my setting Artra always have tails and they never have wings. Tails are mostly cosmetic, but they could certainly make unarmed attacks with them if they wanted. They usually have poison breath weapon but some rare individuals...

Why are we having a challenge mechanic if the characters are not in a challenge? What does nay of this represent? Why does arbitrary number of arbitrary actions resolve the situation? It is funny to me how a lot of narrativist mechanics really do not seem to be about the fiction to me. They're...

I mean, the design is just terrible, but I also really do not care that much. I am not obligated to follow WotC designs. The dragons in my current setting do not even have six limbs like all the D&D dragons do. It is still a bit perplexing that this got through quality control.

So I am not quite sure how literally I should understand "the map and key" in the OP. Because I don't think that this is literally how most gaming even in D&D and similar games work. But like others have pointed out, maps can be understood more broadly, nor they need to exist physically, they...

Which makes it very "mechanics first, fiction as colour." If the player invents something clever that should resolve the situation then and there, it cannot be done as we have not rolled our predetermined amount of checks. Same with character doing something massively disastrous that would make...

Yeah, this is why I always found them unsatisfying as presented. They simply do not do what I want them to do. The "gameplay" becomes about inventing reason to let you roll your best skills, which to be frank, I don't think is the most interesting way to generate compelling fiction either.

The weakness of such allegory is that as by externalising these aspects of human experience to distinct and fixed groups, you elide the aspect of the fluidity of the psyche. That one human may go from "hobbitish" to "orcish" in their behaviour. And I think this elision is rather significant one...

Nope. They have somewhat different wing anatomy than modern birds, but their wings aren't actually backwards.

But that is not how it has been used here nor I think this is even correct.

Sure, but if you are not careful with it, you might mess up the message of your allegory when you consociate it with your mythopoeia. Like for example if you have hobgoblin nazi-analogues as allegory to the human evil of xenophobia, then if the hobgoblins are born like that, as hateful things...

It looks stupid beyond belief.

And that's why it "works" for representing great strength. It feels significant so it is significant. And I certainly do not expect the level of simulationism from D&D where we can equate the exact percentage of the ability score increase to the exact percentage of strength increase in the...

I think different biology will affect behaviour. I think super long lives species will have different attitudes than shorter live ones, people evolved from small herbivorous prey animals will have different temperament than ones evolved from carnivorous pack hunters etc. Though those differing...

But not in way that affects anything.