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I think the biggest thing for me was being more selective about both the games I would run and who I would run them for. Early on I run games that I thought people wanted to play in the way I thought they wanted to play them and like largely recruited from tabletop RPG meetups and game stores...

I do not think there's a mediocre referee problem. I think there's an undue burden because we put it on referees to align players' informal expectations into a cohesive game. That rather than seeking alignment of everyone's natural desires the easiest way to reach alignment at the table is for...

I would trust needs to be about particular expectations. Like no amount of trusting a GM will help if they are trying to tell a story and I just want a compelling challenge. I do think the baseline expectations of how play should function work for a significant amount of people. But that's about...

I mean Dollhouse Play specifically refers to significant stretches of play without either resolving or establishing meaningful stakes. If you see a description of dollhouse play and see it as reflective of your game, I'm not sure what to tell you. Do you feel like that's descriptive of your game...

No problem here, as long as we accept that setup matters here. That part of how a GM can set the table for how much player's choices matter is in setting, situation and NPC design.

So that means you should lie about how that style actually works? That you not liking it means you have free cover to call it non-functional and make all sorts of declarations about how it works that don't match multiple decades of practice many of us have experienced.

All anyone is saying is that interaction design is important. That as GMs we are responsible for the way our setting and scenario design impacts the decision space available to people who play our games. That an analysis of how free players are to make choices includes that setting and scenario...

At the very least I think your standard for something being a railroad should be more significant than has some choices about means but not aims. Because if our standard is it's not a railroad if you buy a ticket on the train or there is some very minimal amount of choice involved than railroad...

It's a lot closer to forces of nature, especially once Ruin moves come into play. The Omens are often as much of a threat to themselves and each other as the threats they are facing. It feels pretty close to Golden Army Hellboy in power level and theme. My group adored it. They loved how the...

Clair Obscur - Expedition 33 might be my favorite of the last 5 years or so. Black Myth - Wukong, Yakuza - Like A Dragon and Sifu are really the only games that come close. The earnest storytelling combined with an insanely fun combat system that rewards dodging and parrying while including fun...

Yeah. You just need to know where to look. It doesn't come from the same people or exist in the same spaces, but there is an abundance of creativity. It's not fundamentally different from say people complaining about AAA video games while denying the well-storm of creativity in AA games...

I care that the final product delivers a unique and cohesive experience. I don't require the components to be particularly innovative. Some of my favorite games include Into The Odd, Apocalypse Keys and Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition. None of these games have mechanics or play procedures...

At the end of day we cannot say anything definitive about what roleplaying games are or how their designers are allowed to define their play procedures because roleplaying games aren't one defined thing. It's just a broad category for games that share similar characteristics. Apocalypse Keys is...

So, for context throwing heads is part of the resolution mechanic of Prince Valiant. It uses a dice pool of coins based on your character's skill.

So, I do not believe that the depth of a setting in play is determined by the hours put into it up front. The settings I have experienced as having the most depth are ones we have developed through play in our games. Our Amsterdam Vampire Chronicle, the Final Fantasy 8 inspired game we're...

Instead of talk about agency. Let's talk about the ideas behind it. How much efficacy do players in your games have and how much should they expect? Is access to means to acquire reliable information they can trust about the setting they can leverage something you account for in scenario and...

The reason to do so is not to like give player world building authority. It's to give yourself flexibility to frame situations that resonate with PC interests and like put them under pressure. You still retain the overall authority. You are just expected to use it in pursuit of maintaining the...

Good Narrativist GMs at least. The context for these conversations was "let's do Narrativism". Trying to extrapolate them to a general audience is not a very sound idea. Particularly when we have Vincent in other contexts designing OSR material and talking about how much he loves Moldvay.

In the vast majority of Narrativist games the GM has content and scene framing authority. They are just instructed in how to utilize it. You provided authority but only to serve particular purposes. But like at the end of day if you enjoy world building for its own sake you should run a game...

In a lot of cases the GM I want restrained is me. The reason I want myself restrained is to remove things from my sphere influence I do not want to be responsible for. I also kind of want my players to keep me accountable. That instead of focusing on being some mythical Good GM I can just focus...