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I haven't followed every twist and turn of your game, here, so it is possible the grind has been just as harsh as ours was. Our game also wrapped up a couple years ago, so I may have forgotten some things, lol. One thing is for sure, in TB2e going back to town, especially when battered and broke...

I feel like your TB2e play, @pemerton , is rather less gritty and grubby and more freewheeling than ours was. We had some interesting play in our game, but I almost always felt like at the end of a town->journey->adventure->town cycle we were less well off than before! Like we were mostly...

This is another place where experience with Agon is useful. There can be a very definite tendency to try to find the 'right' interpretation of the Signs of the Gods. Even I wasn't immune to this as a player, at first. When an Island is designed, the signs clearly should be designed such that...

Yeah, I think you are definitely right about Agon 2e. The Island for each session kind of sets up parameters in a way similar to what the Myths sound like in MB. I found Agon's gamist aspect a bit lacking, but maybe we were just not playing it hardcore enough to push on that. If MB is kind of...

I think it is, perhaps, difficult if you have not really analyzed the makeup of RPGs and the structure of play in a clear way. I find there is great resistance to doing so in certain circles. Classic signs of this which I often see are statements about how system and related things are...

I think you are misunderstanding me, that I am not being clear. I am not holding up D&D '74 as a ' bar' at all. It's an example of a design which fails to even attempt to be complete, or even explain itself at all really. Later versions of classic D&D (TSR D&D) sometimes expound some of their...

Yeah, I am just observing that many RPGs are highly incomplete. I think @pemerton has mentioned Cthulhu Dark, which is just very basic mechanics and nothing else. It's not IMHO really a game per se, more a bit of fixins you use when making a game. D&D '74 is similar, and even calls itself a...

I don't think 'Conceptual Horizon' or anything like that is involved. A game text is a text containing the instructions for how to play a game. You read it, you do what it says, you are playing that game. If you get to a certain point and there's no instructions covering what you do in situation...

Perhaps, I wouldn't die on that hill, but in my experience MOST RPGs, particularly more traditional ones, make HUGE assumptions about what an RPG is and how it is played. These are pretty critical gaps in my book. You don't notice them, because you basically scan such a game as "Basically D&D...

OK, so more like PbtAs where there is no real concept of 'difficulty' beyond "did you roll against a good stat bonus" which MB also effectively has. But I'm just saying, in terms of cost, consequence, and SCALE the thinking is along the lines of BitD, so maybe the way I would handle deciding...

I would expect that you could consider impact similar to BitD effect. You could think of leverage as similar to position. intent and cost seem reasonably straightforward, and risk is generally negotiated in most games I'm familiar with, so you could do that. I think, in that sense, once you...

I'd venture to guess that your 'any' is a pretty narrow range of the full diversity of what is out there. Like, if you include 5e, BitD, Dungeon World, Agon, and say 1000 Arrows and Ironsworn, in that any, then such a position becomes untenable.

I would never keep the stakes from being explicit, but the use of the SC is cool. I've very rarely seen anyone use them in 5e. I really don't do 'free checks' anymore in any D&D-like that I run. You want to achieve a goal, that IS an SC, by definition.

I know, we could invent this thing... lets call it a 'skill challenge' where you make choices and get successes or failures depending on what choices you make! (usually with dice providing a fortune element, but "rest and accrue a failure, but get your stuff back" seems like a perfectly fine...

Bad Forgist! Bad!

Wait!? Haven't we seen this concept before? <Flips through 4e DMG1>. Hmmmmm! Well, you won't find me complaining, but I will point out that the weak forms of resource management and whatnot will mean you won't get the clean implementation 4e gave.

I didn't have too much problem with some degree of earning it, or growing into it, but that process was less like 'the birth of a hero' and more like grinding. I think 5e made some progress vs say 2e there, but 4e did one thing well for us. Your character might be a small local hero at level 1...

I mean where the PCs are big darn heroes and the focus is on heroic action vs a lot of detailed exploration, logistics, etc. If you literally read the 1e PHB, the introduction/preface it TALKS ABOUT being Conan or Elric or something, but the actual game is nothing like that. As written it's more...

Actually, my experience is that D&D, certainly explicitly since 1e PHB, has advertised itself as heroic fantasy. Except for 4e it has never delivered that. I mean, maybe inconsistently here and there at certain levels, for certain definitions of heroic. 5e might be able to do it, kinda, if the...

Sounds frustrating. I will say, all of this is a bit amazing to us old guys! Like, an entire campaign is wrecked by a few PC deaths? I mean, yeah I get how a TPK breaks continuity in play, but if characters are fragile then maybe the continuity needs to be invested in something more durable...