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Perhaps some written stuff in advance? Maybe in the lead-up to the adventure starting, RP through doing investigations, collecting witness info or the like, and then it's a "report" from the party's sources? I dunno if that would actually achieve the goal you're seeking, but it might help ease...

This is good, for moments when action is expected and details are best discovered rather than laid out. I do think there's still room for the other, flowery kind of exposition--when a slow-paced moment befits the scene. For example, a situation of dawning horror or awe, where it makes sense...

If you have proof that it is essentially ignorable, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, requests for "proof" are irrelevant, time-wasting, and an effort to conquer the discussion through "you didn't jump through the hurdles I invented, therefore I win".

Because that's how the words read to me. Things like... It seemed quite clear to me that this proposal was "This is what D&D should be doing for everyone". If the intent was purely opt-in alternative, words like "what if players were forced" and "enforced externally" were not, in my opinion...

My problem here is that what most people refer to as "optimization" is seeking to exploit enemy weaknesses--or, more often, to create weaknesses, since that's a thing D&D play permits that a simple game like RPS cannot represent--is avoiding exploitable play and over-reliance on perfect...

Pre-written adventure paths certainly do this, yes. But so does making the GM the absolute arbiter of absolutely everything. Telling one person, "Everything you say goes, and nothing you don't like ever goes" is, I should think, at least plausibly going to lead to some people saying, "It's...

All I can say, then, is that it is self-evident that (a) this is a practice, and (b) this practice is fairly widespread, even if it is not universal. Further, I think it's blatant rhetorical trickery to insert things like the concept of a "crisis" or "gaming is facing a problem" or the like...

Seems to me that this is an agenda. Now, we can't just be making a point about approaches and their flaws. We have to be identifying a horrible existential threat that must be stamped out. Now, we can't just be critiquing a known, oft-discussed, and fairly likely behavior from inexperienced...

Really cool and cinematic...for some people. For me, I very much prefer signature weapons that the user develops a bond with, and then grow its abilities through effort, or magic, or augmentation, or training, or exposure to dangerous things, or...etc. Having my weapon break all the time gets...

The problem, of course, is actually making the choice worth taking, without making it obviously correct every time. You don't want to create a game where everything settles into "side A Dodges, side B attacks; side A attacks, side B Dodges; side A Dodges, side B attacks"--because now you've...

[[Citation needed.]] You can find someone to say anything you want. Whether or not someone says something is hardly a mark of its truth. There's someone who says that the moon is made of green cheese. Are you more inclined to believe that that is so as a result? You were going quite well here...

Consider, for example, that you can lose them by failing skill checks (e.g. in Dark Sun, failing Endurance checks to survive in the desert). And if you run out of them, you functionally can't be healed anymore. So, as I said, a soft, no-penalties wounds system. It's not a death spiral wounds...

At least at my table, nothing is fudged. Of course, it helps that essentially all rolls for whether something happens are made by players, not by the GM.

Hit points are a good mechanic. But Healing Surges added on? That combo is a great mechanic. Because now you can have your cake and eat it too. You can keep all the utility and straightforwardness of hit points, and have the benefits of a light, simple, not-super-punishing "wounds" system as...

In my experience, it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with making "a villain to hate" (which is, if anything, a very silly and humorous thing to say!) Rather, it has to do with the plain and simple fact that D&D, even with the breadth of internal styles it has....is not, has not ever been...

Well, my main counterpoint to this would be that some people aren't particularly good actors, but they can have phenomenal story ideas. Giving those story ideas a compelling, exciting, enthralling performance is rather different from having them in the first place, and just because someone can't...

Seems a bit of a jaundiced view to me....

Would you say there is a difference between the act of facing a challenge to something you care about/your character cares about, vs. the act of changing the sound of your voice, speaking dialogue chosen for dramatic effect, and "selling" a scene as having a certain emotional color and texture...

I think the reason they get dragged along with it for folks who come from other, non-narrative-game perspectives is that these innovations generally came to their attention only through narrative games like AW, 13A, etc. So if they're in a narrative game, they must be narrative mechanics, right?

Personally, I thought the 5.0 Warlock "split subclass" concept had a lot of potential. It just wasn't necessary for the Warlock, and the new version is better for making pacts non-unique. The Summoner class I've been chewing on for a few years now uses this model. At 1st level you choose the...