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I switched to potions as a bonus action in the midst of the 5e.2014 campaign I was running in order to get players to use their consumables more often - and not just healing potions. It helped, so I consider it a worthwhile rule change.

I think you've got some definite good points here. It's hard to keep the Boss Monster from going down like a chump if the PCs have the power to direct their ire at it other than by scenario design - you keep him where nobody can get to him until he's the last encounter. But that just creates...

If we're living in the recoil from the 4e period, and D&D's the most successful it has ever been, then I think it may indicate that this recoil period is a better place for it to be. Specifically, if 4e's solution to encounter balancing alienated a part of the audience, it seems likely that part...

Oh, I love Verhoeven’s take on corporate corruption. It’s so over the top blatant with the way they say the quiet part out loud. A junior exec gets bloodily gunned down and the Old Man says “Dick, I’m very disappointed in you.” Dick rants on about military contracts, replacement parts, for his...

Is that really so different for a PBtA game? I know PBtA games usually exhort a GM to follow certain principles, but more traditional games have always talked about fair referees as well. Other than emphasis, what's the real difference? That there's a track record of GMs who have taken player...

Yeah, dude, whatever you need to tell yourself to feel right...

For anything but a full-on railroad in which the GM decides what the players will do and how the dice will roll, then the GM is pretty much also playing to find out something. That's the ambiguity of the "play to find out" slogan. A GM may have sketched out events that will happen in the future...

Hey, at least 3e had a rationale and keyword methodology behind what worked together and what didn't. 2e had quirks you could only know by looking up the magic item like how rings of protection didn't help your AC if you wore magic armor and cloaks of protection didn't help your AC if you wore...

Well... yeah. Extremely specific themes/cultural references aren't going to be done well by any game not including those specific themes and cultural references whether that's 5e, Rolemaster, Traveller, GURPS, Vaeson, Pendragon, or Champions. That said, if all you need is a system for...

Terms like thematic or focused design vs broad or generalist design can, I think, cover the differences in intention by the designers without characterizing a particular design intention as deficient, aimless, or lazy. If we were to use a medical analogy, people usually don't characterize...

Yeah, that's the term that set me off, which is why I asked about examples of what kind of game could be aimlessly created.

It's not a question of special purpose or general purpose tools here. It's the extremely value-laden comparison of intentional vs aimless or the idea that designing a fun game, even if not designing specific purpose tools, could somehow be "aimless" as if it's someone wandering in the wilderness...

Honestly, this kind of thing just tells me that people discussing "specific intentions" vs "creating aimlessly" are incredibly pretentious.

Did he have examples of games "created aimlessly"? Because I have a hard time imagining a game created aimlessly - even original D&D, adapted and cobbled together from about a zillion influences, wasn't exactly "created aimlessly". The aim was creating a reasonably fun game that used mechanics...

D&D, probably 5e due to general ease of running it. I've run 60+ sessions of campaigns before. I have a hard time imagining something well outside the D&D-verse (including PF and other D&D-variations) keeping PCs (mostly) alive and players interested quite as long. D&D is well-suited to doing so...

I don't know that there's any single definition of "modern" TTRPG mechanics that makes sense. I get that narrative tools are all the rage in the way some people look at RPGs in this discussion, but I wouldn't consider narrative-orientation to be a definitive requirement. Rather, I'm more...

Whatever, dud(e). I tried.

I mean, how dare those players go off script, right, and not build up dramatic tension? I guess the solution is to not depend on dramatic tension or narrate the dramatic effects and consequences on the NPCs who all died on the suicide mission while the PC was focused on exerting the force point...

Oh, I'm pretty sure you could break out 1e's cumbersome grappling rules and have yourself some druid Ultimate Surrender action going - for appropriately consenting adults.

The issue here is that a wizard, with the appropriate skills or tool proficiencies, does have that understanding as much as any professional armorer would in D&D terms. Fabricate may be a problematic spell when it comes to D&D simulating an economy if 7th level and higher wizards exist in big...