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Some days I don’t know how to feel about our little corner of nerdom. This is obviously at least four separate and distinct hobbies in a trenchcoat pretending to be one hobby. We are not the same. We don’t want the same things. Our preferences are mutually exclusive. It’s not about better vs...

And that’s as good of a replacement phrase as any. “Player-challenging design” or “player challenge.”

That sounds amazing. Great player. That’s really too bad.

A whole lot of the warlock, cleric, and paladin class fiction is dependent on serving a higher power. It’s weird and “a-fictional” to try to avoid having to deal with that aspect of the class. It’s not about hypothetical gotchas. It’s about undermining the fiction. If you don’t want to have a...

I was aware of the comics but skipped them. Had a quick read of the wiki article. “The infection even allows severed heads without lungs or vocal cords to continue speech just to further its infection capability. This was witnessed by Wasp and Hawkeye in the original Marvel Zombies, they were...

If people really dig the concept, check out the Rotted Capes RPG. It uses the exact same premise. B-list superheroes have to survive in a world overrun by zombies…including A-list superheroes turned zombies. Maybe that would work as a Borg superheroes game, too.

Exactly. A good base of solid, if minimal, mechanics as the starting point and cover the rest with the conversation and player skill.

Ah. But that's the thing. In games where player skill is important, it's not relegated to only social interactions, it's the dominant resolution mechanic. It's how almost everything is decided. In OSR circles you hear people talk about how combat is a fail state. It's a fail state because the...

Exactly. The referee makes a long string of decisions to determine basically everything except what the player decides their PC does. And if the referee decides a roll is proper, they also decide all the variables and factors involved in that roll. But yes, once the dice fly...it's up to the...

Exactly. The referee makes a call. Which some people in the thread seem to absolutely hate, despite it being the absolute heart of RPGs. No. The social equivalent is the murderhobo convincing the king to give up his kingdom.

What's the alternative to the referee deciding things? Randomly roll for everything? Roll to see if the guard can be negotiated with at all. Roll to see what kinds of negotiating tactics the guard is open to. Roll to see what kinds of negotiating tactics the guard is closed to. Roll to see if...

Everything but the players' choices is decided by the referee. If the player can roll for something, what skill to roll, what the TN is, what modifiers apply if any, dis/advantage, how the NPCs re/act, etc. The only difference is there's a math rock clattering across the table or not. The roll...

Take a page from PbtA games. The referee makes moves on PC failures.

The idea of something like Shadowheart is quite appealing though. Swap out the superhero fantasy for something far darker and grittier. A fiction-first OSR game. Hmm...

I can see the appeal of that approach, but I generally prefer the opposite. The results have to make sense in the world first, regardless of what the mechanics say. The fiction, the world, etc are more important than the mechanics. If the mechanics spit out a nonsense result, it's ignored. Not...

It was nice to see someone stand up for the sling. It is absolutely maligned in D&D.

The obvious response here is: If you didn't want a patron then you should not have picked a warlock. That's kind of the point.

To me, skilled play is all about the gaps in the mechanics and player creativity. It's not possible for the mechanics to cover every possibility, despite many designers and players pushing to do so. Things like instead of having a stand-up fight you ambush the enemy in a ravine and roll...

So a spin-off question from another thread. This one about warlock pacts... If the idea of making a pact with some supernatural power in exchange for power is a key part of the fantasy, why are so many warlock players vehemently against the notion of that pact ever being a part of the actual...

ETA: With a little more thought this should be a separate thread. Moving it over here. https://www.enworld.org/threads/quantum-warlock-pacts.715130/