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I think they are also meant, when desired, to function as campaign-specific restrictive packages. That is, you could not allow customization of feats, allow packages to be tweaked (one feat swap, maybe) but not substitute wholesale, and/or make up your own custom packages of feats into...

To make sure we are on the same page, "deep immersion" is something that I'm postulating as the roleplaying equivalent of method acting. The players would strive at all times to inhabit the mind of the character, and then cause the character to act consistent with that mind. In some case, the...

Emphasis mine: That's exactly right. "Reinforce" doesn't mean--"take this idea and run with it so hard that now Homer is practically forced to stay drunk all the time to be relevant," for example. That's just removing choice the other way--making something too strong instead of leaving it...

We haven't anything stronger than implied and/or fade to black since about 1997. Our group is a large, long-running group, and since that year, there's always been at least one kid running around loose in the room or nearby. We've even had moments when I had to tone down the violence more than...

That won't resolve it either. The huge, insurmountable problem there is that really good processes are very difficult to achieve, and when achieved are always either highly specialized or so general as to require a lot of fudging around edge cases. This is true in every field where process...

CS might very well have this problem, but I think it is a more stable structure from which to avoid it than feats. That is, the challenge for CS is to make it so that several of the specializations at the top are fairly close to the same power, and then not stack them with other specializations...

Mostly true, but with one huge exception. Strong immersionists were always vehemently against it, to the point that anything smacking of author stance was supposed to be subsumed into the characterization. That is, the game system might force you to sort of consider something from author...

How close does that retreat match to Hasbro buying them out? I've read the accounts that says the sale was pretty much required, as the energy and finances to sustain the WotC push was shot, without some kind of backing. So maybe the early push of 3E was something that couldn't be maintained?

@Chris_Nightwing , I think there is one key bit missing from your proposal, namely that if some spells are allowed to "circumvent the mechanics," then your structure doesn't really handle this. It mutes it, by putting off the breaking spells to a later level and capping them, but that is across...

Agree with Zustiur. I'm guessing that the most fruitful avenue to pursue to get there is to reverse engineer the specialists. That is, name the specialists; determine what spells they are supposed to have; make sure that some of their categories are backed off from where the wizard is now...

Way back when that essay was new, long before that big topic that pemerton linked to, possibly on another board (I don't remember exactly), I made the claim that "disassociation" was nothing but a poorly chosen word (with bad baggage) to mean roughly that it interfered with the speaker's...

I have a hunch that the bigger question is going to be how many gamers tend to really lock into one game, versus how many gamers tend to enjoy experimenting with new systems? The first group is a much tougher crowd when it comes to making a sale. You have to convince them not only that you...

The idea that every class should have its own distinct and powerful mechanical toy is the same kind of simplistic design that led to every 4E class having its own list of powers. It's got a certain amount of "different for the sake of being different" behind it that inevitably leads to a lot of...

This. I suspect that the confusion is caused by some short-hand being used in the playtest, with unexplained assumptions. Namely, that in some of the places where they are saying "fighter" here they should really be saying "martial" or "non-caster" or something like that. (And I suspect that...

This comes up from time to time, due to needing to follow a conversation, wanting an aluded to link, or simply checking to see if it is time to rethink the ignore because of some quoted portion in another message. What's the best way to do this? Obviously, you can edit the list, but that's...

I'd like to congratulate Emerikol on setting a new record, at the time of writing this a mere 58 posts. Sure, he or she stood on the shoulders of giants, but it is nevertheless an impressive achievement. My only question is can he hit the two remaining edition war bits before 100?

Daily powers in D&D are somewhat analogous to democracy--the worst form of government except for all the others one ever tried. :) There's a certain "least common denominator" aspect of daily powers that works "well enough" across a wide variety of playstyles and preferences, but rarely sings in...

Manbearcat, if you haven't already, you may find it useful to scan through the posts in that earlier topic on "disassociation" that pemerton linked. It may save you some time in the long run.

This is the kind of thing that I can see working better as a guide than a restriction, though I'd do it by some kind of keyword instead of class. Class is too brittle as new classes get added to the game, and somewhat misleading for classes the more they are drifted. (A stereotypical fighter...

Yes. That's the distinctions between a game framework, a core system, and modules. And then you also have distinctions between modules, too. Me, I think the only thing that will meet their stated intent is something close to: Fairly complex framework, well designed. A "core system" that uses...