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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.

Why does "you" in the second-last sentence refer to the GM? Can't anyone at the table speak up about their preferences? And why are people who have these very different ideas of what they want to do in their RPGing sitting down to play a game together? That doesn't make much sense in the first...

By "theme" I also have in mind things like what aspects of the fiction will the game make salient? For instance, will emotional significance be a thing? And what sorts of ideals or conception of human life will the game foreground? For instance, as per my post not too far upthread about...

Yeah, I get that impression. Another impression that I get is that there's a reasonable chunk of players who mostly want to play a wargame/skirmish game, and the fiction beyond that is largely set dressing - so they want the GM to provide that, to create continuity and a link between the...

The idea that a table needs to be "controlled", or that players need to be "kept in line", is bizarre to me. Do people have this same problem when they sit down to eat a meal together? I play RPGs with people who want to play RPGs together. The GM role, which I frequently occupy, brings with it...

To me, it seems that a RPG can have an opinion, or an intent, even though it doesn't set out to have one. I say this not to disagree with the two quoted posts, but to elaborate upon the perspective from which I agree with them. Upthread I said that GURPS has a theme/goal: "to express a certain...

I don't want to put words into your mouth, but the general problem sounds like a perennial one: a lot of stuff is not well-designed.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on AW's mechanics: Game mechanics The system uses the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. It features dice-rolling checks for challenging situations of 2d6 plus a relevant stat. Results of 10+ are successes, while 7 to 9 are partial successes or hard choices, and...

Yes, this. I've tried to convey a similar idea upthread. I don't know Apocalypse Keys other than your posts about it. But drawing on RPGs that I do know, I can say that Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer 2e are not just tools for exploring a particular genre or fictional situation. I...

A few more RPGs that are not narrowly focused on a single thing: *Burning Wheel *Torchbearer 2e *Cortex+ Maybe also 4e D&D. But I would think of the above being "modern" in a way that (say) GURPS, or 3E D&D, are not.

I can tell you what I took away from your "aimless" comment (and some of the elaboration/discussion it prompted, eg from @Campbell): A system is aimless, in this sense, if it adds on elements intended to represent this and that component of the fiction - eg encumbrance rules to represent how...

What are the "meta-mechanics" in Apocalypse World?

I'm not sure what you mean by "style". But your first sentence in the second quote seems to identify the theme/goal of GURPS. It expresses a certain way of thinking about the world, and how action within the world produces results.

Wilderness play, in OD&D and early AD&D, is structured fairly similarly to dungeon-crawling (map-and-key framing and resolution of movement) but with a different resource clock. I don't think it's all that well designed. I also think it's secondary to dungeon-crawling. I don't think differences...

I'm on the side that thinks that OD&D (and Gygax's AD&D, at least up until the end of the PHB and for good chunks of the DMG) had a clear focus and associated intention: namely, skilled-play dungeon-crawling, with map-and-key as the core method for establishing what scenes the GM presents to the...

I think of "modern" more as pertaining to a RPG's overall design, rather than its mechanics. To me, a game feels "modern" if (i) it is clearly not a wargame or wargame variant, but (ii) it does not rely on unmediated GM curation/decision-making to ensure that the game "goes". The earliest RPG I...