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Before we can proceed, I think something needs to be cleared up. I feel like I don't even remotely understand your point of view. The way I see it, world simulation would be: PCs are going to the church of the Dragon God Hm, what's going on there? OK, there are several major actors in the...

"I'm running [X]". Done. Well, maybe "I'm running [X], it's a game about [Y], I'll post a full announcement on my tg channel, you and you are invited specifically" I know that some people really want to play with their friends, but I honestly don't get it. Like, if I want to hang out with...

I'm honestly very sceptical that someone actually starts with socio-economic situation in the region and then extrapolates goblin raids from it, rather than putting goblins there and figuring out a diegetic justification for their raids afterwards. I don't think so. I'm honestly not a big fan...

It's not only the exceptionality of the characters, it's things that happen to and around them. Like, goblins don't terrorize the village because of socio-economic reasons, they do it, so the PCs have something cool to do. One way or another, interesting things need to be happening, so the play...

Fate (not to be that gal, but it isn't an acronym, by the way) positions itself as a game engine. There are prepackaged Worlds of Fate that come with skills, stunts and good aspects to choose from. And it's not like Fate is any kind of ambassador of rules light games. Many (if not most) have a...

For the same reason Call of Duty dominates shooters instead of better games like Quake. Because casuls don't understand things and refuse to be educated. Regardless, rejecting the vocabulary of RPGs when talking about RPGs is like being mad at terms like "juggle" or "frame trap" when discussing...

Maybe. I see the appeal of "living breathing world", but pursing this goal in a medium that by its very nature places specific people front and centre rather than the world itself sounds counterproductive. Alex Jeffe from Riot Games calls such games, that contain conflicting fantasies...

This makes me question is there a reason to, y'know, run a game in the built world if the main source of enjoyment is world building. An RPG seems to be a dubiously effective way to "bring that world to life". I'm engaged in two separate world building "games" right now, in one we're...

It is unreasonable to not use pretty much the only language that has terms to talk about RPGs, though. Everything of value about RPGs came from Forge. Rejecting Forge lingo = rejecting any kind of actually interesting RPG discussion, period.

Breaking, or at least, bending them: a ruling must be different from a rule in what it prescribes. Otherwise, well, it's not a ruling, it's just application of a rule.

GM2 isn't forced to follow GM1's rulings (otherwise, it wouldn't be a ruling, it would be a rule) The latter ruling is, really, consistent with nothing (as I made it up), but if it were a real game, there would be a reasonable expectation that acting after sustaining a lot of damage will...

MC doesn't say "no" (this reminds me, I probably shouldn't do translations in the middle of a night just because I found a cool font that only supports latinic), MC describes what consequences an action would have, and if the player likes them, the play just continues. Otherwise, Duel! rules are...

If this counts as a ruling, then when I was ordering my latte this morning, I made a ruling. I guess every decision can be called "ruling"? But I don't really see a point in doing so. The way I see it, a ruling implies a binding precedent. If in a dnd game, I say that a character who was...

Here's the entirety of the rules in Swashbuckling! It fits on a half of a A4 page, it surely does exist, and the play process doesn't involve making any "rulings" of any kind. So, yeah, rules-light games do exist.

I mean, you lack a skill critical to playing RPGs — maintaining suspension of disbelief and immersing yourself in the process. There's a term for lacking a critical skill: being bad. It seems crystally obvious to me.

Your "preferences" aren't preferences. They are you coping with being bad at games. Nothing is "less" or "more" immersive, nor can possibly be. Immersion is a skill, that can and should be practised and improved.

I can see gameplay in disarming a trap, fiddling with levers and mechanisms, all that, but not so much in looking for one. And in any case, "hey, this is a chest, and it is trapped, your akaviri danger sense is tingling like crazy" would invite players towards interaction better than staying...

The point is, the actual "maker of a trap" is a real human being in our real world. People who laid it are fictional, they don't exist as entities of their own, and start existing only when interacted with by other real humans in our real world. If a tree falls down in a forest... The value of...

The problem is, the makers of that trap don't actually make it to protect anything. They make it for the players. The same way architects of a fictional city don't build for people to have a nice living in, they create a location for a game that is vaguely kinda sorta resembles a city.