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Well, I don't see how you could call a 'hidden rules' game really a game. It is simply an exercise in puzzle-solving, at best, or a blundering around at random. The THEORY is OK that in an RPG the fiction should provide all the input you need, but that is preposterously unrealistic. We all...

And yet those low level PCs survive in this 'most dangerous' part of the city. Either the city just ain't that dangerous (for PCs at least) or there's something protecting them, plot armor? I mean, sure, you can be careful, but in a world full of super powerful high level magical beasts, danger...

Oh, stop it! There's huge concessions to playability in all these setups! Of course there are always clear signposts telling the players whether or not some area is easier or harder than what they are able to handle. Most play would be pointless otherwise. Exactly what the delineations are and...

I found Paragon, in the form of Agon, was interesting, but pretty limited. Our games seemed pretty heavily slanted in favor of the PCs, though we did fail one or two islands. It was fun, but felt pretty limited.

Yeah, that was true for me c1976 or so. Been there, done that.

Fair, TB2e for instance has a lot of emphasis on gear and supplies. Shopping is thus high stakes. I'd note that in TB2e you're lucky if an adventure even nets you enough to buy supplies and heal up. So bargaining, stealing, and scrounging are vital. It also has very robust rules for running all...

Yeah, as a bit of a tangent, one of the things I like best about running low myth kind of Story Now is that there are no bottlenecks of this sort. A player tries to move in a direction, it fails, things are just shunted into a slightly different path. There's no 'beyond the door' that has any...

Yeah, although IME games can start to implode when there's been a bit too much backstabbing. We did do one 'evil campaign' years ago where it was all expected and up front. There was still the issue that, yeah no hard feelings between players, but the party still fell apart! The GM was pretty...

Right, I'm not really super critical of trad play. @Gilladian ran a couple of 5e campaigns for us that I would call 'pretty trad', though certainly in the spirit of 'putting the characters at the center of things' and giving the players stuff we asked for. I've commented on them a bit critically...

Yes, some things are not all that different, BUT. There's always that 'but'... ;) The context is pretty different. There's a much tighter loop in BitD. I only just now made up the Blue Coats showing up (or rolled some as an entanglement perhaps, something like that). Your prep is AT BEST...

Eh, I think my experience is that you don't need a ton of filler. Narrativist games also tend to be pretty strong on thematic coherence. In 1KA Odu Nobunaga is rising to power. You oppose it, you assist it, you try to survive it. There's not a lot of need to explain why Takada and Oda are...

Eh, I agree with @pemerton here, 2, socially conformant game-facilitating play is extremely prevalent. Many of the old classic pitfalls of early play illustrate this super well. Every party would have just that one thief who was shady enough to do his job, yet mysteriously totally loyal to the...

I would say it's not my place to bring toys, the players do that! I might bring a couple of my own too, but my job is to fill in the blanks, maybe prompt some action, help manage the focus, etc.

None of us are telling the players what their characters should be doing. But, if we're playing BitD and the players have decided their crew are all fashion hounds and their vice is shopping sprees, and they enjoy playing those out, fine. Still, the Blue Coats are going to show up, frame them...

Well, I think my only response to this is annecdote. Our 1KA game had 3 PCs. Mine had a goal of opposing the dominance of Odu over the Iga Free League. This was 'baked in' as a loyalty rating, and embodied in fiction in her backstory. While her loyalty to Iga was tested to a degree, her aims...

I think this is one of those arguments which sounds good, but falls apart on closer examination. The players clearly chose to engage in a type of high consequence play. It's thus absolutely on the GM to deliver it! I certainly think there's plenty of room for discussion and diversity of opinion...

Yeah, I think the things we did in those two games were often high risk "put all your cards on the table" sorts of play. But I think the weightiness of the play in 1KA is pretty built in. I guess you can focus more on the minutia of Sengoku Era warfare, or tea ceremonies or whatever. The...

I think you missed his point entirely. He's talking about pace, not success vs failure.

I find it difficult, with my experience, to believe that most people aren't after a bit more exciting vs less exciting, slower paced, game. But I don't think that people always want the game to go at breakneck speed constantly. So, I don't think everyone wants to play 1000 Arrows all the time...

None that I've ever played or run. I'm sure it is possible, but our 1e AD&D campaign degenerated into a mishmash of 1e, Boot Hill, Fight in the Skies, Gamma World, and just plain weirdness. The Kzinti Fighter PC became fused with a beholder after the room they were both in got fried with a...