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I've got a view on this: it's analytical and genealogical. Classic D&D is, at its core, a game of puzzle-solving. At the start of the game, the GM has all the information (in the form of the map and the key), and the players have almost none (perhaps some rumours, not all of which they can rely...

I've run multiple campaigns of 60+ sessions: early B/X and AD&D campaigns, and then two in Rolemaster, of around 300+ sessions each (both got to levels in the mid-to-upper 20s); and a 4e D&D game to 30th level (in about 120-odd sessions). Over the past decade or so most of my games have been...

An addendum to the above post: upthread someone talked about sim vs "gamism" in the context of classic Gygaxian D&D. For the game to work as a game - that is, for the players to be able to do the "skilled play" thing - it has to be possible for the players to reasonably infer things about the...

@mamba, I've quoted a series of your posts. And am trying to work out what your position is. At some points, you seemed to be talking about players' power: to declare actions, to avoid a narrow theme, etc. Now, you seem to be talking about a GM's power to decide what happens next without...

To me, the relatives rule looks like a rule intended to serve the purpose of getting a player whose PC dies back into the game. It reminds me a bit of the rule in Torchbearer that lets a player carry a (limited) amount of Fate and Persona from a dead character to a new character. The 10% tax...

Right. If I read someone's account of how they use exhaustion/stamina-type conditions for walking long distances, and implement twisted ankles for falling into a pit trap, and worry about hands being severed by a hidden blade in the ominous hand-sized opening trap - but no character in their...

I don't understand why. AW has a rule for resolving any declared action. It actually is broader, in that respect, than any version of D&D prior to 4e.

You seem to think that resolving a player's move, in AW, is profoundly different from resolving a player's declared action, in D&D. I don't know why.

As per my reply to @thefutilist not far upthread, which talks about RM, I think there are limits in that game (and similar games) to how far you can get with committing yourself, as MC/GM, to the game's fiction's own internal logic and causality. I also discovered this with Classic Traveller -...

For me, "play to find out what happens" - if it is to be meaningful - has to include the GM. So I see any notion of the GM having a pre-determined pathway or storyline or "big reveal" in mind as a departure from "play to find out what happens". You give a couple of examples, but there are many...

I can see why you say this. But then it seems to pick up T&T. And bits of D&G (eg saving throws and hp, at least as Gygax articulated them in his AD&D rulebooks).

My view of sim play is mixed. I think the idea of relying on mechanics to specify outcomes of declared actions, by modelling/representing (in some fashion) in-fiction causal processes, is a real aspiration (I did GM Rolemaster near-weekly for about 9 years, and then near-fortnightly for another...

I'm not sure what you mean by this. RPGs are games. They are played by participants, who - as in any game - make "moves" that cause the game to unfold/develop/change/progress. What is distinctive about most RPGs (and is true of all the ones I've seen mentioned in this thread) is that (i) the...

Vincent Baker deliberately used some jargon to avoid carrying over too much baggage from other RPGs. But the MC is a GM. "Playbooks" are classes/professions/occupations. Other RPGs have GM moves (not all of them, but some of them), they just don't call them that. Harm clocks are a type of hit...

I don't really know what you mean by this. Eg I'm not sure what your "it" is, that you say is aiming at providing something else that is not as tightly controlled. GURPS (to pick up on an example that's been discussed) is very broad in the topics of fiction that it aims to be able to represent...

I replied to a post about "control over the fiction". I didn't know you meant worldbuilding. Players in classic D&D, if played in the manner described by Gygax in the conclusion to his PHB, exercise a lot of control over what scenes/situations are presented. Exercising this sort of control is a...

Well, as I posted upthread, Map-and-key is a way of having mechanics - in particular, the mechanics for determining where the PCs go on the map - drive play, but its role in classic D&D means that I don't see it as modern. And the idea that mechanics simply represent stuff to be imagined - with...

The bibliography for BW Revised includes Dogs in the Vineyard, Fulminata, Inspectres, My Life With Master, The Riddle of Steel and Sorcerer. The introduction to the game (Revised, p 12) refers to characters as being "represented by a series of numbers, designating their abilities, and a list of...

What do you mean by "players having control over the fiction". Players in OD&D and AD&D, who play in the manner set out by Gygax in his rulebooks, exercise a lot of control over the fiction. But those are not modern games, I think basically by definition!

Given that a particular set of RPG mechanics, in conjunction with a particular set of processes of play, really can only provide a relatively distinct experience, intending anything else seems like it is aiming at the impossible.