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  1. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I just don't consider what you are saying here to be some sort of axiom of RPGs. Classic skill-test D&D certainly included some hidden information, BUT I would point out that conventions largely served to telegraph everything. c1977 dungeon crawler, we're at a door. It could be trapped, there...
  2. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    4e is really just the culmination of a trend of design in the 3e era. Not only do later 3.5 supplements clearly experiment with systems that are either effectively or close to AEDU, you can also find other elements of 4e there, like the psionic system is definitely presaged in 3.5 supplements...
  3. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    No, the problem with 3.5 (3e generally) is that it is NOT a highly organized exception system with good generalized subsystems. It gets a lot of the way there, but the game became an unwieldy mess as it was extended. Even from the start the pieces didn't mesh all that well. It just became...
  4. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I personally found the AW advice to be crystal clear. I think it is fine to say that AW doesn't care that much. Like, you can follow its instructions and stay very much in character the vast majority of the time, or you could do it in 3rd person. DW doesn't actually say 'never use 3rd person'...
  5. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Let's suppose a game, let's call it a PbtA, where the interest is centered outside the characters. That is, while the action is still character focused, how they deal with the premise, that premise is something beyond the personal. It could be a fantasy game in which the overwhelming...
  6. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Mechanically the changes are pretty straightforward. As I said in another post, the real change is in attitude towards the players. While 4e certainly supports a kind of trad play, it's much more transparent. A GM cannot fudge or play by some hidden set of rules. On top of that it is well-suited...
  7. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I gotta say, AW is pretty strong about wanting things to stay in character, and DW is also rather explicit here. But that being said, the GM should address the PCs, not necessarily IC through another character. Still, when asked a question, the player should be answering in character. The focus...
  8. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Ok, but 'process of play' is the thing you are designing! By explicitly focusing, like a laser on that as the base level of game design gets you to the masterpiece of clarity and effectiveness that is something like Apocalypse World. This is a huge point of the whole 'onion diagram' thing. Start...
  9. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Don't overplay this too much. I've, for example, played in a few PbtAs GMed by @Manbearcat. I feel pretty sure he'd be HAPPY in the situation outlined above to say "OK, Yorick, you're at the door, you know there's a dog that will probably catch your scent and show up soon. You can go ahead and...
  10. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    IMHO there was almost nothing that changed between original D&D through AD&D 2e, they're fairly modest variants and updates of basically the same game. You could easily have rolled up a core LBB PC and be playing it in 2e with the very same spells, class, race, etc. Your AC would be, possibly, a...
  11. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Right. I just see, mechanically, a slight variant of d20 almost straight out of 3.5e. Saves are translated into defenses, and traditional spellcasting is loosened and turned into a ritual system, while the plethora of other kinds of abilities, plus combat spellcasting, are reworked as AEDU...
  12. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I think it is worth mentioning that GNS was NEVER about people, or games, it was about PLAY. Even in that sense its author has since abandoned the notion that classification of specific instances of play is worth much. We'd all probably be better off if we took a broader and less...
  13. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    It may not be very prevalent today in games like DW2e (which is pure OC/neo-trad exhibit my character curated arc play from what I can see, though obviously things could theoretically change). That being said, the crucible, at least the laser focus on an agenda and premise, is built right into...
  14. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    No. Certainly what is discussed on EnWorld generally as 'simulation(ism)' is at best unrelated to Narrativist play goals. Like in our 1KA game we use elements of historical Sengoku politics and whatnot as inputs, but they simply exist like any other fiction to structure play, to create...
  15. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Well, obviously there's plenty of mechanics involved in the various tests, but the process of updating your beliefs doesn't seem to be at all 'sim', nor even really constrained by the mechanics. It is definitely a kind of Narrativist artifice, you chose to change, and you chose changes which...
  16. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    Right, you use derogatory terminology, but you don't mean it. Lets just drop this, it can't lead to anywhere good. As for D&D is not medieval Europe, you cannot really say that. I mean, you cannot really say that the milieu envisaged in many, perhaps most, D&D games is not based on some...
  17. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I don't know what 'part of the check' means. That is, I think you're creating a pretty arbitrary criteria here. It feels like it's simply tradition for tradition's sake.
  18. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    I get criticized any time I say something similar.
  19. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    No, you all just call it a 'quantum cook', I mean come on! Of course you're saying it's wrong! As for who is up at what time, I think you make a lot of assumptions about things based on modern notions. If we're going by medieval European norms the kitchen staff sleeps in the kitchen, tends the...
  20. AbdulAlhazred

    D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

    So, basically only one very specific game mechanics is acceptable and all other variations are simply wrong because they're different. As I say, conservatism is frustrating, lol How do you know the detailed nighttime behaviors of random cooks? This is a detail you invented. Well, yes, the...
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