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I strongly suspect these guys in Elden Ring were inspired by the pumpkin-headed bugbear:

I seem to also recall that there were a lot of miscommunications between EGG and his artist(s?). I believe the dog noses was a result of Garry trying to express that they had snouts and the artist taking “dog noses” very literally. Same as the bugbear with a literal pumpkin for a head. It’s...

It was 3e that fully pivoted to small dragonfolk kobolds. But they weren’t exactly dog-people before that. Dog noses were the only dog feature explicitly mentioned in their description, and IIRC there was a module that described them barking or maybe yipping. But they also had scales and...

This “maintaining the relationship between the task and intent” thing is confusing to me. The intent is what the player hopes will happen as a result of their “task.” Whether it does or does not, it has a relationship with the “task; either the “task” brought about the intended result, or it...

You’re confused because you’re trying to treat “the task” and “the intent” as two different things that can be resolved independently, but I am not. There is only the action. What you’re calling “the task” (what I usually call the approach) and what you’re calling “the intent” (what I usually...

This is hard to answer because the options are in terms of proportion of encounters and that’s not really how I do it… I voted for “usually” kind of by process of elimination, because I don’t mostly use random encounters (let alone always), but I do use them, often, and not “just as filler” or...

I’d say the goal is to know the painting’s age and the approach is by looking at it. But, I agree with your broader point, I’m just proving it by being needlessly pedantic.

No. Because goal and approach are both essential and inseparable parts of the action. There’s no automatically succeeding on the approach but needing to roll for the goal. There is an action that is composed of both goal and approach, and if the results of that action are uncertain, one roll to...

Yeah, that’s certainly a way to do it. I prefer keeping the number of possible outcomes to two, three, or four myself, just to keep the decision of whether or not to go through with the roll easier. A binary “on X or higher, you get your goal, on Y or lower, this other thing happens” is easy to...

Ok. I’m not sure what I said to make you not want to engage, but sorry for whatever it was. Have a good one.

See, I would rule that hitting the tree with a thrown rock is trivially easy and doesn’t require a roll. The roll is not to determine if the rock hits the tree, but to determine if the rock hitting the tree successfully distracts the guard. And I would probably rule that on a failure, the guard...

Sure, if you’ve previously established that “cheering someone up” can restore their hit points. That’s not normally possible in D&D. What is “a conflict resolution game”? Isn’t conflict resolution part of every RPG?

Nah, it was That 70s Show that infected my brain with the snark worms.

Yes, which is why it’s preferable, because something is actually happening in the fiction.

No. You can describe trying to do so, and the DM, determining the approach has no reasonable chance of achieving the goal, will narrate the results of failure without calling for a roll. Critical… Role…?

No, the player wants to distract the guard. Explicitly so in the example being discussed.

Right, which is why there’s a die roll. To resolve the uncertainty in whether or not you accomplish what you wanted to do.

Yeah, it’s like the jerkass genie trope, where the genie actively looks for ways to (mis)interpret your wish that will result in a negative outcome for you. I’ll admit, in my youth I had a stint of being That GM. It’s frankly embarrassing now, but that was just… what I thought you were supposed...

Asking questions is actually not described as part of the play loop in either 5e PHB. Both say the DM describes the scenario and the players describe what they want to do. Granted, asking questions to clarify aspects of the description of the environment that might not have been clear is, I...