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Well, if consistently followed, they both lead us into the same place: the rules and setting being in sync. Though of course the resulting settings will look rather different. For my 5e game I did a bit of both. I altered some rules to better suit the fiction and I wanted. but I also shaped the...

I'm perfectly fine with this for actual high level characters, which I see as mythical heroes, though I think we reach "cannot be killed by a single arrow" territory way too fast.

I really do not like lumping genre emulation etc with simulation, as that point the term becomes so broad it is basically meaningless. Every RPG to some way or another emulates something.

It is not simulation as the causality is messed up. We have PC with some rune reading skill value or such (and possibly some DC or similar for the task?) and then from this we derive odds of something completely unrelated, namely the runes being beneficial or bad news. Furthermore we have the...

Oh, and as Sorensen's manifesto has been mentioned several times, I quite like it. I think it outlines the important aspect rather well.

So I might have skipped a few hundred pages somewhere in the middle, but believe or not, I've actually read most of this ludicrous thread. Some random comments on a few of the things being discussed: Is D&D simulationistic? I think it is somewhat, though there are a lot of gamism in it. Things...

Yes, but the problem is solved by just giving them all masteries. It is not OP, they will not be able to wield all weapons at one anyway.

I think the new style NPC spellcasters are far worse offenders in this regard. I'm fine with some streamlining and shortcuts with NPC mechanics, but I feel that things that are similar sort of creatures than the PCs should roughly feel like they are sameish. It is just bizarre if for example...

Yeah, I don't believe that this is how it works. Most people are just commoners with strength 10.

Yes, but they probably shouldn't have to. I don't believe in rules as protection against bad GMs, but nevertheless some guidelines for what skills can actually do would be beneficial. It simply makes being consistent easier, and makes sure everyone is on the same page about what is possible.

I really don't not think that the strongest man in town has strength 20! 16, maybe, 14 more likely. 20 is something that only super rare heroic individuals might have.

It is super weird and also unnecessary. Just let them use them all.

After reading the book, and possibly after reading some reviews and discussion about the game. It of course might sometimes be necessary to alter rules mid campaign, but I do my best to make major revisions before the game begins and communicate them to the players so that they know what they’re...

How is that not description of all of our physical reality, including our brains? It is all just particles, electric signals etc bouncing around. That is a supposition, and one I am not sure is terribly tenable. Whilst I personally am rather doubtful about our current materialistic approach...

Wells and Verne are not steampunk in the same reason Parthenon is not neoclassicism. Scifi is about futuristic technologies, regardless of whether nominal era it is set would be the present or the future. Steampunk is about the reimagined past, inspired by vision of the future by people of that...

What Wells and Verne were doing was just scifi. It may seem "steampunkish" to us, as it is set to era usually featured in steampunk. Steampunk is specifically a form of retrofuturism, and you cannot be "retro" to the era you're actually living in!

Yes, but there probably is no point in taking it seriously.

What I prefer is what I call "grounded weirdness." There are weird and fantastic things, but I try to present them as believable part of the world. For my current setting Artra, I wanted the world to feel feel a bit alien, but still recognisable. So it has a lot of little things that set it...

Right. Not only do the AI steal the artists' jobs, if the artist doesn't want to be complicit in this they need to stop displaying their artwork. And yeah, this is happening, I know a lot of people are these days reluctant to post their art online. Dead internet theory becomes more likely every day.

I usually try to keep the world in motion that something is always happening even if the PCs didn't initiate it. Then the PCs can decide to get involved or not.