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Turning into a long day, so not going to get too in-depth here... You've been talking about engagement, which participation is just part of. Yes, you're not participating; that lack of participation does not have to equate to complete disengagement unless you actively choose such. I'm not so...

For the bolded to happen the overall design would need to be a whole lot more modular than it is. Modular design is antithetical to unified design, and unified design has (other than a brief glimmer of hope during 5e playtest) been a stated intent of every WotC edition.

Unfortunately, I don't think the latter part of that can be designed. The entertainment piece has to come from the people at the table, and will or won't do so pretty much regardless of the system design. Agreed. Again agreed. I'm not after anticlimax all the time; I just want it to be able...

If I'm out of action for an uncertain length of time, I have several options. In rough order of best to worst in terms of what I could do next: --- continue paying attention (quietly!) to see what happens next, i.e. seamlessly slip from participant to audience --- find something game-related...

The people who made the Indy movies are trying to entertain an audience. I'm just trying to keep my character alive. Here, the "That was it?" would be immediately followed by "YEEESSS!!!" and a cheer.

If you become completely disengaged when your character isn't or can't be involved, as opposed to staying engaged and entertained by what's happening even though you're not actively participating, that's entirely your choice. It's not the fault of the game designers. TV shows are randomly...

Perhaps and understandably unclear in my post to which you refer, I was speaking about the game (both at-table and in-character) rather than the real world. @billd91 seems to have read me bang-on. "You don't get to play any more" is Chick-level hyperbole. This isn't Black Leaf dying and her...

I disagree with the bolded, in that a player can decide going in whether or not it's going to be fun no matter what the game or system or situation may be. It often depends on the players out-of-game mood at the time. A player in a good mood who decides before the session "I'm going to make...

That's our fundamental disagreement, as I say that when the game state denies your involvement for however long then so be it. And periodically-denied involvement is a built-in fact of the game state, sometimes inflicted by the opposition (usually as an effect that takes you out of combat), and...

"Life isn't fair." gets from me the response "Deal with it." There's always going to be times when not everyone is involved at once: --- a character gets taken out early in a combat (held, webbed, slept, killed, petrified, polymorphed into a toad, whatever) --- the party splits, intentionally...

Dungeons: constantly. Dragons: not so much. Around here, sometimes the biggest obstacle to play is food/snack preparation and consumption, leading to the alternate game name "Feasts and Foodies".

Given my druthers I'd get rid of spell concentration as a game mechanic entirely (other than for a very few spells, all of them non-passive illusions) and go back to spells having fixed durations. I'm of the mindset that if I can hit you with something like a Hold Person and get through your...

Not at all. Sure the lower-level parties might never get access to them, but their higher-level opponents do... :) Spells: they're not just for PCs any more.

I wouldn't! I and the party would hail it as an easier-than-expected victory, maybe even an upset against the odds, cheer, and happily move on. And sometimes, the big boss is going to totally nerf you.

So if they can't do damage and they can't cast save-or-suck (which includes anti-buffs), what's left? Buffing allies? Boring boring boring. Divinations? Should be doing that before combat, not during. Summoning? Yeah, let's make this long combat take longer by adding more idiots to the mix...

All this does in principle is nerf lockdown spells even more, to the point of what's the point? Sorry, but lockdown is and should be just that: lockdown. You're out of action, completely vulnerable, and dead unless your allies can carry the day.

That was often my strategy as well, with a healthy dose of milling so I could run the opponent out of cards. Didn't work very often, but man was it ever satisfying when it did! (yes, I was nasty to play against 'cause I loved drawing out the opponent's agony if s/he didn't just concede) But...

I'm fine with spells that break the combat system and do things other than straight h.p. damage, even if-when those spells become I-win buttons. Even as a player who likes playing blast-mages, straight h.p. damage is boring; 1e redeems this by having the targets' items have to save if the...

And in case someone hasn't already mentioned this, those things are themselves largely recycled from 1e (stronghold rules) and 2e (most of the Birthright setting). Still nice to see WotC bringing this element back into the game, though.

Take cars. They achieved their basic form and function by around 1920 if not sooner, and from then until about 2005 all we saw were incremental innovations and tweaks which in aggregate a) made a 2005 car immensely different than a 1920 car and b) still recognizable as a car both externally and...