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How do you imagine this system could be exploited?

So, let’s just assume for the sake of the thought experiment that we’re able to work out the math and find exactly how much HP the average PC loses over the course of X levels, and give the PCs that much HP at the start of the campaign. We can even assume we have a formula, so we can just plug...

Yeah, based on this, I think you’re probably misunderstanding what I mean when I say “RPGs don’t have economies.” Yes, you absolutely can think about how a fictional economy might work and set prices and award treasure in a way that makes sense based on how you imagine that economy to work. It’s...

No Because I have spoken to economists. And it’s not that a reasonable economic simulation is impossible, it’s that what RPGs do is not simulate economies. You can’t really get around the fact that, in an RPG, value is arbitrary. There are no natural resources, no labor, no supply, and no...

Then they should create more practical things to spend gold on, obviously. These are the words of someone who has a layman’s understanding of economics. The reality, however, is that an actual economy is an extremely complex beast, which cannot be practically simulated in a system where there...

Amusingly, I generally advise less experienced players that the PHB’s recommendation for creating a rogue is wrong, and that Wisdom should be a higher priority for them than Intelligence because Perception checks are so important for rogues to be able to find traps and secret doors. I tell them...

It’s been a long time since the D&D Next Playtest, so my memory of it is not perfect, but I don’t remember this ever explicitly having been the case. I definitely remember a lot of folks on the WotC forums talking about using them that way in their playtests, and the developers saying that was a...

Disabling a trap can be automatic. If you figure out how it works, and come up with an approach to disassemble or sabotage the mechanism, there shouldn’t really be any uncertainty in the result. Checks come into play if your approach is risky, or if you don’t have a specific approach in mind and...

Some DMs treat Perception like 3.Xe’s Spot, and Investigation like 3.Xe’s Search. I don’t think this was the original design intent, but eh 🤷‍♀️ if people like using it that way and do so consistently, more power to them. Personally, I use Perception for detecting sensory information (which...

Yeah, pumpkin doesn’t even taste good on pizza! 😜

That’s the thing, pumpkins started being used in the US because they were more accessible here

I would, but I see what you mean. Traditions evolve and “traditional” can mean according to current custom as much as it can mean according to original custom.

There’s something very amusing to me about the idea of trying to make an adaptation of Keep on the Borderlands - one of the earliest D&D modules, and famous for mostly just being a sandbox full of monsters with no real plot “more traditional” by giving it an overarching narrative.

@Piperken Strike that, this sounds like one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard of. Thank you for mentioning it!

Never heard of this game, but it does sound interesting!

Sort of, except if instead of a painting of a pipe it was like… a smudge of brown paint that’s maybe a bit thinner on one end.

What I’m getting at though is that regardless of if you “take it seriously” or not, whether you try to create the impression of market forces or not, it’s not really an economy. A pricing system, maybe, but certainly not an economy.

I like it! Seems sound in theory, I’ll have to give it a try.

Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly. Your proposal is for any given object (e.g. a monster, a town, an environment, etc) you pick three or so sensory details, and always touch on those details when describing the object in some way, and otherwise keeping description minimal?

You finish those in one session? Those each usually take me 2, or 3 if the group plays on the slow side.