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Indeed. In the "quantum ogre" example, the ogre is (more or less) a fixed fight, which simply guaranteed appears whichever path the party chose to take. It's (ironically) more like an anti-quantum ogre: it is 100% certain to be encountered, but where it is encountered is set by the path the PCs...

The fear of "metagaming" is a thing that should be left behind. Not all metagaming is bad. If complaining about a genuine problem that upsets you and causes your experience to be worse now qualifies as "metagaming", then fear of "metagaming" behavior has become an active impediment to enjoying...

I'm given to understand that it was meant to be plug-and-play for nearly any setting with a pseudo-medieval situation. Like Dark Sun probably wouldn't work, but most others would. I imagine it would be dead easy to drop into 13A's Dragon Empire, for example. Then, the Gods of Light and of...

I have articulated my stance on death many times here, but it's possible you have not previously seen it. I am opposed to deaths that are all three of: Random: Caused by factors completely beyond player control or accounting, e.g. random orc mook #7 got a lucky crit and rolled max value the...

Because then you can do things that aren't about survival, but instead about achieving other goals. That's...literally what makes Superman an interesting character. His story is a firefighter's story, not a warrior's story. Against any Kryptonian with actual combat experience, he straight-up...

You joke, but if D&D actually had an official Final Fantasy XIV crossover book, it might be the first time in genuinely a decade that I want to buy a WotC book.

Technically, I could still be proven wrong. If they published no books other than those explicitly announced as of today (which aren't predictions so they don't count), then it wouldn't be a positive integer number. But yes, the point was more that we have no information to make any guesses...

I predict a positive integer number of books, which will have themes, and include content both for GMs and for players.

Indeed. The flaw inherent in the "survival value is all-important" argument is that it has forgotten that survival is, always, merely a means to an end, at least for a sapient being. "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself.... It has no survival value...

Folks could get thrown off by PF's draconal agathions, however. Draconals come in five colors: black, green, red, white, yellow. Of those, four are traditional chromatic dragon colors, and each can appear in varying ways, including a more straightforward flat color, a gemstone-like or even...

Yeah, those are probably the only place we'll see a mind goblin showing up. True, true, but by that same token, they took the risk of provoking the Sugondese.

If someone else hadn't made the joke, I was going to.

Whereas, despite being a GM, I approach it almost purely from a player perspective. I'm a player. I want my choices to matter. When my choices don't matter, I feel frustrated. If I'm in a situation where it feels like I am bound to one and only one path, I will feel like my choices don't...

Whereas I find that character death makes players entirely check out of the game. "Oh, my character can just die randomly despite my full effort? Okay, no point investing, I'm going to lose it, so I should never get attached." They'll act out, goof off, and otherwise be disruptive or misbehave...

While I understand that you see character death as absolutely necessary for any actions to have any meaning, there really are other perspectives. As someone who appreciates those other perspectives, I often feel frustrated by the disparaging terms used for such things. It's more complicated than...

It should be! Like this is genuinely one of the few areas where 5e did just...straight-up copy 4e's homework without alteration. And then people chose to run it in a much less interesting way, for reasons that defy my ability to understand or explain.

There is a prophecy. She's specifically prophesied to be "wed" to a monster that even the gods fear. (Which is what Eros is; he can, after all, yank around Zeus like a chew toy.) So...the Fates are writing prophecy...which means they control it...

Well, "cannot die", but also "cannot live" either. That's why making it to the surface always results in you getting kicked back to the House. You can't survive on the surface anymore because you are bound to the House, even more than dear old Dad.

I cannot speak to what the designers themselves intended, at least for most editions. But I can say, at least for me, I prefer it when they are much more than that. Which is one of the reasons why 4e's skill philosophy (separately from its design) is by far my favorite of any edition. Because...

In fact, I'm pretty sure there are multiple times when one or more deities commandeer an oracle in order to shape the world to have the result they want. IIRC, Venus/Aphrodite specifically directs the Oracle at Delphi to tell Psyche's (unnamed) royal parents to sacrifice her, meaning she quite...