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Let’s not reframe the issue. The core fact remains: without you as the referee, the campaign doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter what authority the rules distribute or limit, if you dislike the direction the players want to take, you can always walk away. Whether it’s “stakeless shopping...

Sure, as long as it’s acknowledged that you’re putting your thumb on the scale so the campaign reflects your creative agenda as well as the players’. And since you’re the referee, that gives you an effective veto, regardless of what the system claims, because without you, the campaign doesn’t...

So when players are engaged in what they want to do, even if it's aimless wandering or just in-character fluff with no real stakes or pathos, you step in and "move things along" if it doesn’t meet your standard for dramatic weight? That sounds less like freedom and creative collaboration and...

An observation on this: in many campaigns, regardless of play style, the issue isn’t whether the players win, but how they win. Eventually, players become skilled enough to handle all but the most dangerous threats. But even then, challenges remain. The nature of the complications shifts...

After reading up on Burning Wheel and talking to friends who’ve played it extensively since release, I’d describe it more precisely as a game that challenges a character’s beliefs and motivations in dramatic ways. How those challenges play out can vary significantly, often depending on player...

Except I didn’t mention “story arcs” or “stories planned in advance.” I referred to kinds of stories, which were raised in a discussion about whether campaigns produce coherent and dramatically satisfying narratives. Your comment about stories being authored doesn’t address that. I agree that...

So, just like in my Living World sandbox campaigns, where I determine or roll for how the world is in motion. Eventually, the players take action in response, and the situation escalates or shifts, because that’s how they control or shape outcomes.

He’s referring to the consequences of failure, as in, “Nothing happens when you fail to pick the lock,” not “We’re just standing around doing nothing.” All the games you mentioned earlier, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Stonetop, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, also handle failure. But as you...

Noted. Those are precisely the same type of RPGs as OD&D. In both, the narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign.

You’re taking the word narrative too literally. Yes, every campaign results in a sequence of events connected through time, so a narrative can always be constructed after the fact. However, some play styles aim to create a specific kind of narrative. In those games, the players and the referee...

Yes, pacing matters in every play style, but that’s not the issue here. What matters is how pacing is handled, and that’s one of several elements that distinguishes different play styles in the first place. Likewise, saying “every roll should have meaning” is too broad a statement. It flattens...

Because you're overlooking the fact that the settings I use were developed across multiple systems. They may have started with AD&D 1e in the early '80s, but I then ran several years of Fantasy Hero, followed by two decades of GURPS, and only returned to classic D&D about 15 years ago. This...

This brings to mind something that happened in one of my GURPS campaigns in the 1990s. At the time, we were trying out different ways to start off the campaign in my Majestic Wilderlands and exploring different aspects of life in the setting. We had just gotten done with a campaign where every...

Your take that Blackmarsh is built around a level progression system doesn’t hold up. The core of your claim is that Castle Blackmarsh is a “starting area,” and that threats get worse the farther you move out, but it’s not how Blackmarsh is designed. I should know, I wrote it. Breaking it down...

The terms I used, like “Mother May I” or “skip to the good parts”, are common stereotypes that have been unfairly applied to different styles of play. For example "we can get to the good bits" "mother may I" (Same post) "twenty questions" If you’re interested in the context behind those, I’d...

The City State of the Invincible Overlord is not a “safer” area. It has its own dangers, political, criminal, and otherwise, every bit as perilous as Dearthwood. Players often choose to start there because they understand how to operate within civilization, not because it’s less dangerous...

You're reading level as a mechanism for gating content. That’s not how I use it. In my Majestic Fantasy RPG, level is a shorthand for life experience, not a script. The world doesn’t scale to the party. Some places are inherently dangerous and remain so. Others are more manageable. The players...

That’s not relevant to my point about levels or how they function in a living world sandbox. The section was there to show that gaining experience, and therefore levels, doesn’t reduce play to a procedural grind. It supports the idea that level can serve as a shorthand for a character’s life...

No. No more than what a party of 50-point GURPS characters can do. In my Majestic Fantasy RPG, here’s how I handle this, from page 67 of the Basic Rules: A better comparison is a group starting in the City State of the Invincible Overlord, who are aware of the Forest of Dearthwood, once the...