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To be clear, I'm not a PC vs. GM guy, I don't view that relationship as antagonistic. The GM is simply responsible for the board state the PCs are acting on. My concern is agency; I want players to have tools they can deploy to get what they want, and not in a weak "had an influence on the...

I'm in favor of very strong rules procedures, especially including skill rules, that are primarily designed for players to deploy against GM generated content. I don't think the question of rules/rulings breaks down nearly on either side of this divide. If anything, I'd argue difficulty...

I'd be a lot happier if the big game hadn't gone so far into generic resolution, it's a real waste of the potential design and publishing power they could be using to put out rules. What's the point of being the biggest game if you're not going to gush forth content? :p

I don't get it because of 5e's omnipresence, but I'd much prefer players report the difficulty to me, or report the levels of effect they can achieve with a given action by reference to whatever the resolution process is. If I've said it's a rough rock wall, it should be within a players...

I'm not so sure those belong on the same scale, given that seems a difference in kind, not quantity. A high agency character might wield disproportional personal power or influence, but still be limited to causally forward facing actions and a personal scope of action. Authors and characters...

I didn't think that's the case. Firstly, because I'm quite bullish on handing resolution off to systems without handing off content, but more importantly because that isn't the design intent. It's not a matter of "owning it," that simply isn't the intended play loop; a GM that judges imperfectly...

That would be a more compelling argument if there was an engine on the other side that offered the same gameplay loop without that flaw. If we have to adopt an entirely different structure of game to avoid it, then you haven't actually offered a solution. Maybe it's a cursed problem, but...

I try not to be dogmatic about it in the TTRPG space, but I don't think you could describe those as the rules to a game accurately.

I make drinks and desserts! I have an espresso machine, I have an ice cream maker, I have a seltzer tap, I have a wall of flavoring agents and I'm playing around with making new steps and shrubs all the time. I'm always shoving affogatos and experimental fruit and spice ice creams at my friends.

These are both close, but there's an essential element missing that I think is the source of so much of the swirl in these discussions. The important bit is the primacy of an interactable world with immutable traits, not that the GM made up that setting. It is an incidental part of the form...

That doesn't sound like a TTRPG mechanics problem. If your level of disagreement or lack of commonplace with another person is that profound, I'm not sure playing games with them should be your biggest concern.

Pretend there's no GM. Some other system provides a set of challenging circumstances, perhaps a particularly clever video game that no one has managed to document, that has answers for all these fun hypotheticals. There is a fixed pattern of wind speeds, the guard rotation will happen the same...

.... So they don't do it that way, but another, different way? I'm making a case for impartial task resolution. Intent is expressed by picking the right tasks and stringing them together to achieve your goals. You get whatever the action says you get and it's on you to make that useful.

This is the most reasonable statement of the position I've seen yet, but I think it still goes too far. Hooks are a convenient means to help simulate players into wanting things which is the primary responsibility they have to make a game happen, not the sole source of interactivity within a...

Just touching on this particular point, 5e is a follow-up and expansion to the 4e rejection of codified task DCs that started with skill challenges. We were moving solidly in the direction of not making task difficulty setting (and the attendant on the fly game design) a DM responsibility in the...

Right, the limits of the situation are what make the gameplay interesting. You get faced with a board you can make limited moves on, and try to resolve it favorably. That can't be sufficient for a "railroad." Getting faced with obstacles and overcoming them is the gameplay loop. The point being...

So I know this company only because they're planning to break into boardgames and licensed my friend's design, but their primary business is fancy cards: Art of Play - Wonder Emporium

I'd like to think my response here was considerably more structured, especially as I don't give much credence to RPGs as an exceptional class of game. I specifically made the argument that the definition you're deploying can't be cleanly transposed to "traditional" games. I'm particularly...

I mean, realistically kickstarting games has the same relationship to preordering them as Uber does to taxis. It is functionally the same thing, but gets away with being less regulated by claiming to be different. I'm a little more sympathetic to the KS case, but it's absolutely trading on the...

I don't think you can skip the rhetorical step where you persuade people you're right. You either have to do that, and convince everyone involved that your view of agency should be universal or concede the point and have a discussion about "authorial autonomy" or some other concept that...