Search results

So what you say about possible complications and how the GM using force to avoid them damages the integrity of the solve is of course true. But I think your conjecture about failure rates etc is just pulled out of thin air. If the Holmes boardgame has 40% failure rate then like you said the game...

So my experiences regarding success rate have been more positive than yours, but yeah, with a real mystery it is perfectly possible outcome that the characters fail to solve that. If one doesn't want such possibility, then one should not run a game that way. My solution to this in my D&D game...

Right. But then why have species as a mechanical splat at all? Why not just have a pool of traits to choose from? Or do you agree with me that if we accept the PC exceptionality axiom, this would be more logical way to do it?

Then again, the fiction is a big part of appeal of the game. That it evokes the imagery of a classic murder mystery is not trivial to the actual play experience, and if that was absent none of us would be discussing this game as it would have not survived past its first print run if it even made...

Players declaring actions that reveal clues, and making deductions based on those clues.

By current setting Artra takes inspiration from prehistoric times, there is a lot of megafauna and people living in simple tribal hunter-gatherer societies. There are also more developed areas, which take inspiration form the dawn of civilisation, ancient Egypt, Minoans, Sumer etc. However...

Yes, this. And I see that a lot of people on both sides of the discussion have liked this post. So do we have common ground? This is what is meant, regardless of the exact words used to describe it, and there is a marked difference? Agreed? Debate over?

Mainly the process used for learning that information.

I see zero appeal in outsourcing the character's reactions to the dice this way. It is completely antithetical to what I want from roleplaying games. But this is just a personal preference, obviously it works for you.

Ok, but certainly the same logic applies to all the species traits then? Like if I want to have halfling that was raised in Underdark and has adapted to have dark vision, why cannot I have that? If every PC is an unique exceptional individual that doesn't need to conform what is normally...

I agree with you on ogres and hill giants. I just eliminated the hill giants. Yes, sure. But notice how the bigger things that supposedly are stronger in fiction still tend to have higher strength score than smaller things. Like there is some connection to the fiction, and I think that is...

Yes. Which is a bit strange and I'd give them higher strength. Then again, if we assume 19 is the average ogre strength, they're still significantly stronger than humans on average.

So do the characters have any goals or motivations? With experienced roleplayers I don't feel this is necessary, but with these sort of players it might be helpful to have them to write down their character's goals and beliefs. Having to do so might make them more concrete to them and would...

That, and just common sense expectations. Like people generally expect significantly larger things to be stronger than smaller things, even though they would be unaware of the exact ratios and reasons.

Yet much weaker than humans. I agree that D&D is not very simulationistic, but also most games make some concessions to gameability in this department. So it is not either or, you can have a compromise, and doing so doesn't make it completely non-simulationistic, but merely less...

So what I want in a fantasy game where all sort of weird and implausible stuff exists is not any precise scientifically accurate realism, I just want broad strokes WYSIWYG verisimilitude. And I don't really want to harp the halfling issue, but to me it is a pretty common sense assumption that...

So what the modifier did was to represent a thing that would be a bigger difference in the fiction with a smaller difference in the game. That is a compromise between realism and gameability. But the difference was still represented, and given the ungodly amount of crying about how this two...

Yes! Or not intrinsically so. What feels more authentic to one is rather subjective. What I don't think is subjective whether the mystery had "real", as in objective answer from the get go or not. That is the "realness" I am talking about.

The "realness" that has been referred to does not mean the sort of authenticity you allude to here. Why do you keep making this conflation when it has been explained countless times that this is not what is meant? It is merely about there being objectively correct predetermined answer to the...

That is fair point, though, I have never found "it is already unrealistic, so it doesn't matter if we make it even more unrealistic" to be a convincing argument. It is movement to to the wrong direction from my perspective, even if the initial conditions were not ideal either.