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I just don't see it. It always comes back to "I'm imagining a world, and filtering it through these rules for players to interact with" and "no you're not, you're doing some other thing." There's not much point (and, understandably, not much interest) in taking any criticism about how one is...

But the output of the rule using the modifier is not an evaluation of the character's skill (necessarily, if it's color, it might be)? That suggests the modifier is poorly labeled. Not labeling it as skill, and suggesting instead that skill is a potential color component of the evaluated...

You know, if it was clear that the modifier wasn't representative of skill, perhaps even going so far as to primarily explain modifiers as a function of luck, I imagine this would be an easier sell. If you demote character skill to color explicitly, the underlying change in system is much clearer.

I proposed this kind of thing earlier, and I've been thinking about it since. I think it solves a little better for player agency than it does for sim concerns. You have a clear optimization case, and it ensures players will have enough space to make decisions to interact with and mitigate...

I'd push for clarity on what is meant by "illusion" here. To my eye, this is "illusory" only the same sense that the entire enterprise is. We're obviously engaging in fiction; striving to generate the fiction independently of the players within some parameters makes the output no more or less...

I think there exists a confluence of what you've called neotrad and neosim here, where the process of character and setting creation is intentionally muddled. I'm put in mind if the occasional bits we get in the talkback podcasts for Worlds Beyond Number, where the cast discuss putting together...

I think of it more as Paper Mario: Impressionist Edition.

Unless you're actively in combat or a dangerous environment, that 3.5 character is presumably taking 10. With any positive Strength score, a creature invested at all in Climb (even just the 4 ranks at level 1) will not be rolling. If they are under pressure, the worst case scenario is they make...

Yeah, that's why you get both concern that players can't meaningfully do that, and/or also concerns that they have too much negotiating power from people who've internalized that as a norm. It's a massive commonplace to shift.

Less common, but the inverse is also a thing you see sometimes, and more commonly in actual play than elsewhere. I'm thinking about the falling from a window scene in Dimension 20's Mice & Murder, which amounted to Brennan Lee Mulligan asking for roll after roll until one succeeded and he could...

Right, I'm saying this doesn't need to be in the GM's hands at all. You could write a sufficiently detailed stealth system before play, then have the GM simply apply it to any given situation. Those decisions about difficulty and repeated rolls could be made by someone else ahead of time, thus...

Why is this necessarily a GM facing problem? You could space this at the system level with a more socially designed stealth system, tested in scenarios that match the intended level of competence. Off the top of my head, reworking Stealth as a fixed value that's spent down to perform actions...

I have mixed feelings. Some of this is a basis for design and perfectly useful, some of it feels like it's written in response to narrativist critique, and some of it has nothing to do with any sort of design or even play advice. Point 1 is useful, but has too many assumptions. Why should there...

I mean, that's kind of obviously the most unlikely way to approach a design that way; no one is commissioning art in hopes it inspires them to a game design epiphany. All of my examples included either an extensive IP, or an artist with a pretty big body of work and a consistent tone/subject...

Right, but all we have are hyperlink structures. We should also just rearrange the scrolling order of the pages with some filter to create different reading experiences.

This reminds me of something I've always wanted in a digital book that's intended for reference. It should be possible to have multiple organization schemes you can flip between. There's obviously a use case for putting them by type, alphabetically, by CR and even something like by environment...

I haven't looked at 5e assumptions, but aren't force effects supposed to exist on both planes and affect them both?

Oh for sure, Dimension 20 is excellent, I'm always excited to give up a Wednesday evening. I just don't think he's at his best in the liveshow situation, especially having seen all the Time Quangle and the Madison Square Garden VODs. They get very parasocical and slimmed down, while still trying...

I don't think this specific point quite holds. There's quite a few art-first success stories in board games, including some pretty heavy hitters. Scythe and Beast were both very successful and designed specifically to use existing artwork, and the company Off The Page Games takes as their entire...

Yeah, I agree. He's way better with more time to breathe. Worlds Beyond Number is definitely his best work, and it's no surprise it's his longest term project.