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It definitely seems like the text of the spell is running under a different narrative of "possessed" than a lot of fantasy gamers would assume. It seems to be treating "possession" as a momentary condition, where an ally might be locked down for a brief period but their movement is jerky and...

Yea, I think there are definitely more categories than that. But it's also why I'm not a fan of using the GNS model as a strict taxonomy of TTRPGs. I think that there are a lot more games being played that don't pursue any sort of "creative agenda" than those that do. (Although I think most...

That makes it sound like you have the premise that actor stance/"immersive"/"I am my character" play is a necessary component of sim play. Is that accurate to your beliefs?

Querulous Smythe, human merchant and alchemist. Late 30's, short and solid in build. His pride and joy is his mound of blonde curly hair and immaculately trimmed beard. Personality is jovial and engaging, but can came across as overly commiserative. A purveyor of health and wellness...

I just don't see any reason why being flexible shouldn't be the norm. You don't see a ton of people who play exactly one type of video game, or one type of board game. TTRPGs shouldn't be any different.

I'd give the players some extra Hope if they narrate their character descriptions in the style of the openings of He-Man and She-Ra. "I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull..."

Tuovinen’s blog post articulating sim as an agenda argues for it more strongly than I can, and we already discussed it on this thread last month. I can’t come up with explanations stronger than the ones already presented.

Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

Because it makes it seem like a creative agenda is something a player is, rather than something they pursue. When I play Daggerheart, I’m pursuing a primarily narrative agenda. When I play OSR, I’m pursuing a sim agenda. When I played Pathfinder, I was pursuing a gamist agenda. I was not any...

Why what?

Players aren't simulationist or narrativist (or anything else). Play is. You might label a player who only wants to play games that pursue only that agenda as "simulationist" or "gamist", but that's a weird shorthand that honestly confuses the issue.

If it's OneTrueWayism to make a judgment that "thinking deeply" about a topic is superior to "not thinking deeply" when discussing said topic, then I am happy to accept the title. I would expect you to have valid and serious positions about some of the minutiae of D&D play, like what classes...

Thank you, sir. I know we often end up on opposite sides of these various discussions, so I do appreciate the support.

It’s not an attack. But you can’t “not think about your play with deep introspection” and also be expected to be taken as seriously as those who do. As an example, I have a ton of respect for the individual who made the blog posts about “blorb principles” we discussed a month or so back. And...

On that, I would very much agree. I have multiple players I’ve played with for a decade-plus who have no engagement with TTRPGs at all other than to play with our group. My wife is one of them. All of them would absolutely agree that they are casual players.

To be fair, a decent portion of the earlier epoch of this thread was Robert Conley going into detail on his highly prepped, “living world” games; I have absolutely no desire to dip into that well again.

If you accept hit points while wanting simulationist mechanics as a general principle, it makes it very hard for us, as outsiders to your perspective, to anticipate what mechanics will trip your sim sensors.

Challenge away.

That would be the conservative argument, yes.

That certainly makes it sound like the “purpose of a role-playing game” is a bunch of in-character dialogue and thespianism; that might have been the conventional wisdom 25-30 years ago, but I think we’ve moved past that.