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The suspicion that statements like this inspire is because unfortunately there are DMs out there who aren't acting in good faith, just as there are players who aren't acting in good faith. In the early days I think DMs had to do a lot of crowd control of the latter, and the default of "if in...

I don't decide beforehand, the default is the initial framing before the players respond. Now, the players may not be interested, or they may work hard to accomplish their goals, it's up to them. Absolutely, poor people can succeed in diplomacy, but the odds may be initially stacked against...

For me in this disagreement and those like it the devil is in the details. If the PCs are low level nothings smelling of manure, my default is they don't get a diplomacy check, they'll be turned away at the gates. If they are obviously rich high level PCs, my default is they get the diplomacy...

I used to believe that rules as physics was the only correct way to run a game, and the alternative was some sort of railroad. This was from bad experiences with seat of their pants referees where I didn't understand how their campaign world worked and constantly misinterpreted situations. This...

I'm not the person you asked but I can give my response. The minion rules serve multiple purposes and even people who use them have differences of opinion on when and how they are used. Minions can be poorly trained and equipped versions of standard monsters, or represent monsters you once...

I don't know a lot about narrativist systems, but they tend to be more modern and far more specific in their targetted gamestyle, whereas D&D is a lot more scattershot amongst it's various editions, and has been adapted to run a huge variety of gamestyles by different groups (it being the only...

Building simulations in the real world generally involves testing lots of potential models to see how they behave and which best suit the target criteria. Often one model works well for certain data ranges but another works better for other data ranges. Solutions often involve using multiple...

No, no it doesn't. The players don't have access to the monster's stats generally and so long as the referee does a plausible job of describing what happens it doesn't necessarily matter what stats he's using for the monster behind the screen. What is acceptable from campaign to campaign varies...

Storytelling and worldbuilding are often involved in running a roleplaying game, but they aren't essential and either of them can be dialled up or down as required. An old fashioned random dungeon with pregenerated characters with no backgrounds can avoid both deliberate story and much in the...

I found PCs being allowed to escape from overwhelming encounters more contrived than a succession of more or less balanced encounters. I've also seen more than one party butchered by an overwhelming encounter that went wrong, even when they tried to flee. (Some editions and some RPGs just make...

Well, unless the demon is weakened to be an appropriate challenge for the hireling he most likely gets killed. There may be black humour depending on how obvious this is to the players (redshirt jokes are common). Generally, in most editions, henchpeople are weaker than heroes and hirelings are...

I've got increasingly distrustful of simple dichotomies for RPGs. While these can be of some value in some or even most games, they aren't universal, and their usefulness is a relative thing. For instance in a game prioritising humour over everything neither simulation nor game are likely to be...

Genre can be either cause or effect or even some of both at the same time. A game's style will produce a genre from the ongoing consequences of play, what can happen, what does happen, and what can't happen. Even trying to avert strong genre tropes can result in a genre IMO. Strong genre...

For players to make plausible decisions for their PC, they need to know some idea of their health, either in or out of character, and have permission to chose actions based on that knowledge. I sincerely doubt many people advocate that PCs know their actual hit point total in-character, rather...

I've seen attempts to hide the hp totals of PCs in games before, and personally I thought the experiments were failures that didn't really work and made lots of work for the players and especially the referee. Either people got super cautious with their PCs, or they abandoned all caution and...

It depends on lots of factors including the level range of the campaign, it's look and feel and whether the campaign has a strong theme or not. So I find it impossible to answer this pole, as the percentage will vary from campaign to campaign, tier to tier, even within a campaign as players can...

D&D playstyles do tend to change as characters level up, and some plots, some playstyles become more difficult to run as the PCs become more powerful. I find this is fine when everyone involved is aware of this, but there can be problems when it comes by surprise. There can also be problems...

IMO 4e makes your concept more viable than 3e on the face of it, because limiting power sources accomplishes some of your goals immediately. Specifically, it sounds like you want to remove the Arcane power source, and the classes it uses. This removes wizards, sorcerors, warlocks etc the flashy...

When I restarted my 4e campaign, I bumped the PCs up two levels a time at low heroic levels, as a signiicant part of my group prefer higher level PCs, but we had some new players who couldn't immediately cope with the complexity of high level PCs. Also I didn't start them of at high level...

My view of the epic tier has always been influenced by the spirit of the old epic tales. the Irish stories I covered in school and those of other mythologies. A definition of "epic" which renders such tales not epic runs contrary to my purposes, and irks me to boot. There's lots of single...