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These are all rather depressing. Our games and character motivations tend to be more positive, with motivations revolving around making friends and discovering different aspects of the world. Our motivations don't generate much drama. Yes, there is conflict because the world can be adversarial...

I agree this is a good thing. Fail-forward and making failed rolls not catastrophic is important in all styles of RPGs to avoid turtling down. An experienced GM can use such forgiving techniques to encourage players to take chances. What Torchbearer seems to do (from how you describe it) is to...

The joke in RQ used to be "I do like ducks, but the apple sauce is also important".

What makes this gameist is that your motivation is that of the player, not the character. The character wants to succeed, but the player wishes their own character to first fail and only then succeed. The player's role goes from protagonist to author and the game is third person instead of first...

I won't argue matters of taste - the bottom line is different takes for different folks.

In Mouse Guard the optional way to advance was to succeed at a number of tests and to fail a somewhat smaller number of tests. As a player, you had an incentive to fail. That is gameism to the level of a boardgame to me. Then again, 4E was a boardgame to me as well. As I said , different takes...

Say I have published a game under the 1.0a license. I now publish a second printing, omitting the 1.0a license. I have now broken the license. I can claim to do this because the 1.0a license is now invalid, having been negated by WotC. I can now be sued by others who use the 1.0a license. Which...

In which case the publisher can create a new company devoted to the 1.1 version, distinct from the company operating under the 1.0 version? Note the question mark, this is a proposition, not a statement.

A lot of people have a very high opinion of common law. But this... I am pretty happy to live in a country with our own weird mix of germanic and roman law.

Refugees welcome! You can host your websites and VTT platforms here - in the worst case, customers will need WPN to access as you likely can't direct sales towards the USA. :)

True - if used sensibly. The best 3rd party add-ons enhance a game setting or playstyle. A product that enables "celtic rople-play" or "renaissance role-play" or "A skyship campaign" interests me. One that introduces a new class interests me if the class involves tropes I feel are missing from...

I wrote a duck race, the Shibaten, for Purple Duck Games. This is for Pathfinder 1. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217254/Shibaten-of-Porphyra Edit: This was very late in the Pathfinder 1 production cycle, which I am reminded of reading the review; lots and lots of obscure Pathfinder...

Does anyone actually think this was a Norse beleif? To me it seems to be an excuse, a way to present the old faith as harmless honoring of ancestors. Linking the pagan ancestors of nordic Christians to the meditarenian ancestors of medieval Christians in order to make the nordic pagans seem more...

While good, these books are now 70 years old and more. Our understanding has changed. My personal opinion (not a professional opinion) is that de difference between polytheism and animism is often exaggerated. Even Greek and Roman polytheism had animistic elements, and both India and Japan...

In the spirit of the thread's origin, one thing I feel makes a game more dungeon-crawling is to emphasize the loot. In 1E you got xp from gold, which made the game very objective-oriented. You did not want to fight monsters, you wanted to steal their gold, preferably without them noticing...

It limits the kinds of campaigns the rules can run. If you want to play a peasant rebellion game where money is a fantasy and feeding the multitudes a constant issue is a problem, you can't if the game requires players to spend inordinate amounts of money just to up their own skills. Likwise, if...

These are not uses for gold. They are penalties for lacking gold. Gold is not a reward in this case, it is a necessity, and if the DM fails to provide it the game stalls. Which is also the case in all Gold as Xp systems where you can spend money to increase character power. It looks like a...

This discussion seems to be less about dungeoneering and more about general grittiness. Not all of us want that, I would be sad if this became the standard mode of the game. There are rules in the DMG for changing what a long and short rest is that can be used. A series of similar optional...

I use this as a DM technique, particularly on checks like knowledge skills or Perception. PC rolls a 4 on a perception check. I as a DM know there is nothing for them to see. "You don't see anything, but you are not entirely convinced you are right". PC rolls a 2 on a Know check. What they are...

Having just asked what the issue is and then reacted to it below, I give a face to the "what's all this then?" crowd. Some of us just don't know what all the fuss is about and need to be informed.