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I'm not sure what you're referring to by "it". Do you mean railroading? I've never used the word "authoritarian". I don't think it's useful. I've talked about the methods used by the GM to decide what they say about the fiction. And my view is that most D&D play is very GM-driven. Which you...

But one can tell the difference. It's just not captured by your description "DM describes scenario, players react, DM tallies results, and then the DM or players describe what happened." If you think I can't tell when I am playing in a game I don't enjoy, because of the method the GM uses to...

That's why I think it could be different for different of these abilities. Like @UngeheuerLich posted.

Let's grant that this is true. It doesn't tell us very much about railroading. How did the GM decide what scenario to describe? Or what to describe as happening in response to the actions the players declare for their PCs? That is what makes the difference, when it comes to railroading. Back...

I don't see why you have to be able to see the target of Hold Person when you cast it. The spell wording is: Choose a Humanoid that you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have the Paralyzed condition for the duration. That is all a description of the...

I agree about the weirdness. I think it can help to keep the fiction in mind: that the casting of a spell always involves first conjuring up the energy (by performing the appropriate verbal and somatic components, and expending the appropriate slot and material components) and then releasing...

I guess I'd characterise it as a reference to purpose - my interpretation deploys the canonical methodology of text, context, purpose.

A significant difference, for me, between readying and those subclass features is that the subclass features are intended to be power-ups: they allow casting a spell when it couldn't normally be cast. In 4e D&D, they would be free actions or no action (as is the case for the 4e Bladesinger's...

From what you've described, all I can infer is what @soviet inferred: you seem to be describing relatively GM-driven play. Though it's not entirely clear: who is the PC in the market? Why does the half-orc do what they do? Who decided that this half-orc is part of the PC's context/circumstances...

Right. Some narrativist play - eg Burning Wheel, to a slightly lesser extent Torchbearer, and in a bit of a different way MHRP (at least as I've played it) - relies on that player backstory authority to help make it work. Some - eg Prince Valiant - doesn't.

I hope it's OK if I elaborate a bit on this point. Even the most classic, pawn-stance approach to D&D depends upon a type of "creative synergy" between the players and the GM: namely, if the game is to work, the players must find the ideas of the GM - the clever maps, the ingenious and...

That last sentence is an interpretive proposal. It's not what the rules text actually says. What the rules text says is You take the Ready action to wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you take this action on your turn, which lets you act by taking a Reaction before the...

A really good discussion of this point is this Eero Tuovinen blog: The pitfalls of narrative technique in rpg play EDIT: not to mention the collected blogs of Vincent Baker, especially his discussion of the importance of rightward arrows (ie from clouds to boxes).

Also, "narrative currency" is generally used to refer to things like Fate Points in Fate. Which are not a part of Apocalypse World (the best-known narrativist RPG); and which don't work the same way in games like Burning Wheel as they do in Fate. The sort of play that Fate best supports would...

This isn't true for DnD Beyond. See, eg When you take the Magic action, you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated. On your turn, you can move a distance up to your Speed and take one action. You decide...

I guess the counterpoint to this is that the rules describe Reactions as a special sort of action. So Reactions are an instance of actions (a special instance), not a contrast to them. Now, if in saying that an Action is not a Reaction you're simply restating the action economy of a turn - ie...

The point can be stated more fully: *The additional action from Action Surge is supposed to be fighter-y stuff, not magic action-y stuff. *The Eldritch Knight has a special feature which makes some magic action-y stuff fighter-stuff for them, by letting them substitute spell casting for...

To me, this seems a contentious ruling. I personally don't think that the rules text supports it. Eg the Ready rules say "When the trigger occurs, you can either take your Reaction right after the trigger finishes" - if this was meant to include the additional gloss "unless you have readied an...

Whereas I think they've chosen the wording they have so as to make their action economy rules easier to state (ie they don't want to foreground readying, which is relatively complicated, in their basic statement of the action economy). The fact that this causes some confusion is evident in the...

Aren't your contradicting yourself here? In the second quote, you say that (i) an Action can only be taken on your own turn and that (ii) a Reaction can be taken both on-turn and off-turn (depending on when the trigger occurs). In the first quote, you say that (iii) a Reaction may involve...