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Honestly, it's not realistic to assume they could be a fighter. A 5E fighter, for example, has the following class ability: "You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty". So how do you realistically reconcile a "18-year-old fresh off the farm with their grandfather's dented...

Correction: Any reasonably smart PC would know everything the player does about non-unique monsters if the rules were intended to be realistic, which they are not.

In standard D&D worlds libraries are common, you can buy guides to monsters for 50gp, every large town has clerics, wizards and other specialists who can tell you about monsters and there are guilds and organizations specifically to help you do your job well. It beggars belief that intelligent...

Gotcha. I thought we were discussing standard D&D; my comments were only for those worlds (faerun, greyhawk, etc.)

Tool proficiencies? Like ... using a shovel? Yes, I do assume everyone can do that Trap types? Like "this one shoots an arrow?" yes, if they have detected a trap, it's rare they don't know what it is supposed to do Terrain types? Yes, they know that rain is wet, snow cold ... not sure what sort...

Maybe because the game rules books say that it is? "Volos Guide to Monsters" is available for 50gp to anyone who wants to buy it as an in-game resource. The rules literally say that to only do people collect that info, but they sell it for the same price as a banquet for 5 people. "Books" are...

I guess we have a different view of how stupid characters are. I tend to think that someone whose job is it is to fight monsters and has likely being doing it for years can learn more than characteristics of TWO (or maybe FOUR) monsters. Clearly, your worlds are inhabited by a very different...

Everything? No, but most stuff -- absolutely! It would be a weird world where the guild of fighters doesn't have library containing multiple copies of "Basic Monsters and their Abilities". Even in our world, those kind of books were best seller in the medieval and ancient world for people who...

Thinking about the type of player unwilling to accept setbacks, it generally seems to be a personality issue rather than a game experience issue. If I had to generalize, I'd say that players that have played a lot of shared-world modules or one-shots are less happy about failure, possibly...

I am little curious to know about what you mean by "younger players". I've run yearlong + campaigns for players averaging 10-12, and then in decades 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. When you say you ahed experience with "younger players" can you tell us what age group you've run long campaigns for that...

As far as "awareness of monster abilities" is concerned, I've always been slightly amused by how unrealistic D&D style systems are in how little they expect you to know. I don't know how many times I've been playing an intelligent character who has "killing monsters" as a major component of...

I'm not sure anyone has mentioned DramaSystem, in which every contest needs the players and GM collectively to decide if it's going to be handled using the dramatic rules, or the procedural rules. For the former, your main concern is how your character is affected by the contest and how the...

I have run a couple of Numenera campaigns, and pretty recently finished playing in a Ptolus campaign using the Cypher system. It's not my favorite system or my go-to for any particular genre, but I've had generally good experiences with it, so I'll chip in on some topics: XP into two pools, for...

This is absolutely an area where you can learn from MMOs, for which the economies they run are key to the experience. things to take away: You can always sell/buy to and from the general market. The result will be a slight loss. You do this when lazy or what you created is unwanted There is a...

Trying to keep us on track; we're not talking about flipping a coin for everything. Here's the OP: When it comes to a simple does-this-happen-or-not, the GM either knows or isn't sure. If the GM isn't sure, it's probably because the odds of one result or the other are very close to 50%. Why not...

Agreed on 4E being more gamist. I ran RM for many years and, hmmm, I'm not sure I agree with you there though. There is a fair amount of randomness in the tables, and I think that would be the part that would be most noticeable. For combat, you'd get a lot of results that were A, B and C crits...

Just because about half the posts assume you are asking about a system where everyone flips coins, I want to be clear that I’m answering this question: does the GM need more than a coin flip? Being more specific, if I was to modify the rules of a system I run so that the GM resolves everything...

Actually, most systems I am playing in right now model armor as DR. It's the way Pendragon has done it for decades, and for Fate I'm not sure I've seen it tried any other way. For me, armor decreasing the chance to hit has always been one of those weird D&D-style abstractions that is a just a...

For some genres the fun is in knowing that there is no “solution”. If you are playing a game more interested in dramatic action than task resolution, then moral quandaries are great, because they force drama. It’s only if you frame your enjoyment in terms of finding solutions that it’s an issue...

I use music regularly, typically putting together a 4 hour set of songs / music suitable for the genre. I have many playlists labeled “fantasy’, ‘weird scifi’, ‘deadlands’ or the like. I tend to use mostly soundtracks from films, but throw in the odd vocal song also. handouts and props are...