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Whataboutism is just a false dichotomy with extra steps.

What we do when we gather with friends around a table and play a game together is difficult to characterize as an "inanimate thing" — but it's also beside the point. The point is: "It's just elfgames, bro" is emphatically not the same thing as "remember the person" or "don't tolerate bad...

Prosaic observations of online discussion are the least interesting aspect of online discussion, especially when they're repeated ad nauseam. I'm always viscerally repulsed by the "elfgames" angle. It never comes off as a neutral reminder to stay chill. Instead, it always reads as trivializing...

BG3 is just following in the footsteps established by Mass Effect and especially Dragon Age. It needs to be both D&D and a "mature" BioWare-style heavy-dialog-tree third-person CRPG.

Oh, I've got a few hills. Perhaps I'll just keep it to the extra spicy for today. My top two: 2) Rules engines are always separable from game settings, and it's only the setting that does any real work emulating a genre of fiction. Rules engines do modes of gameplay. In the same way that you...

Side-based group initiative; by-the-book combat sequence (Declarations, Morale, Movement, Missiles, Magic, Melee, Miscellaneous — first one side and then the other goes through the whole sequence when initiative is normal; both sides go phase-by-phase when it's simultaneous, breaking ties with...

Not "despised," just "disliked relative to fighters." I don't have the timestamp to find the exact quote, but Tim Kask (does he still post here to ask?) mentions at one point in this interview how, at least up through the time when the DMG was being written, Gary thought it was weird that...

Correct.

Most of us who began with classic D&D, I think, naturally transfer our familiarity with the 2-for-1 buy-up from BXCMIRC&c. (or the more complicated and closer-to-original rules from Holmes) to the original text from Men & Magic (and Greyhawk), and read that into the text without ever dreaming...

I don't see how mechanical diversity within the OSR (rules light vs. rules heavy, low-powered vs. high-powered) has all that much to do with its more solid, defining characteristics (sandbox exploration, impartial refereeing, pawn-stance RP, etc.).

This reminds me of yet another viral/semi-foundational statement of what the OSR is about: Five Things That Needed Saying. It cuts right to the matter of the OSR being about one specific play-style, part reconstruction and part innovation, and largely uninterested in what people who weren't...

For pretty much any fantasy setting I create, it's a given that the deities are von Däniken type Ancient Aliens and magic is some form of (misunderstood or deliberately obfuscated) Sufficiently Advanced technology.

Okay, but game systems aren't media, they're media platforms. I still like playing on my trusty old SNES, even if I'm not playing the exact same cartridge every time. And my DVD player still works as well as it ever did for watching movies I've never seen before. The same principle applies to...

"Force" in the sense being used here comes from stage-magic jargon. A "force" is what it's called when a magician presents a mark with the illusion of choice or random chance — "pick a card, any card!" — but they already know what the "choice" will be, because they only allow the mark to draw...

Here's my answer to what OSR gaming is, from a few-months-old Reddit thread on the topic.

I play with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. It's not at all clear to me how that's relevant to whether or not a game is fair. You're going to have to clarify what you mean by that. In the past, I've only ever heard anyone liken D&D to a competition when they're trying (whether for...

I take no issue with the label and will wear it proudly. "Enemy of DM empowerment" is certainly one way to describe what has elsewhere been called "disciplined, principled, and fruitful constraint on GM authority."

My problem with illusionism is the same as my problem with fudging, forcing, and other soft railroading techniques: even when used in good faith by a DM who only wants to run the best game possible for the players, they're still negations of player agency, located precisely where player agency...

To level the charge that the OSR pays too much attention to old-school D&D and not enough attention to other old TTRPGs is akin to wondering why a forum dedicated to classic Fords doesn't have any discussion about Chevrolets, or why those Commodore enthusiasts are always talking about their PETs...

At my table, I give fighters (see pg. 2) all of the various abilities that fighters have had in OD&D/Chainmail, AD&D, and BECMI, except spread out over levels 1st–9th. It makes for a very robust and fun-to-play class.