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There's a vast world of difference between "it really does happen" and "it's a major problem that's been crying out for a solution for a long time now." That's worth remembering, because you seem to be trying to suggest that the former is the latter, despite the latter not being a thing at all...

TTRPGs aren't boardgames, and shouldn't be judged by their standards, since they necessarily limit what anyone playing them can do. Imposing those same sorts of limits are too high a price to make TTRPGs "safe" from bad GMs. (Besides, we already have boardgames; if you're that worried about a...

Sure, but the way to solve the problems of mismatches of expectations between players and GMs is by an honest dialogue. At best, you can write advice about that into the sections on GMing, but even then that's just that: advice. At the proverbial end of the day, the player(s) and GM need to talk...

Haha, nope! Spell selection isn't anywhere near that much, and it's hard to countenance any suggestion that it is. My point is that your point about how GMs will apparently screw with a PC's sheet willy-nilly comes across as difficult to take seriously. Particularly since you seem to be...

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I think that this is true for a lot of game engines, be they computer or tabletop, at least if they're "sufficiently" (whatever that means) complex. For instance, in 3.5E we saw a sweeping change, late in the life of the game, where a large swath of monsters that had polymorph (or a similar...

I don't have a source on this, but my understanding is that the various restrictions on spellcasters in AD&D 1E and 2E were an example of this. That is, things like wizards needing to spend "round segments" casting their spells; automatically losing them if anything broke their concentration...

It's funny that you mention that. I was at Gen Con in 2007 when 4E was announced, and in the seminar where they said that there wouldn't be Vancian casting, the entire room burst into applause. I remember being stunned by that.

To reiterate what Riggs said in his seminar, "one thing that stayed popular from the get-go was the idea of implementing "cooldown" periods for powers. This eventually became the AED part of the AEDU suites of abilities."

You're not wrong about that. None other than Ben Riggs has told us that WoW was the impetus for 4E's creation, and that designers were told to try and build a game that would appeal to its audience.

In general, I find it hard to discuss things with someone who's intent on misrepresenting the other person's outlook, particularly when they insist on doing so in the most over-dramatic way possible. Hence, I'll just point out that this "problem" is not in the least "unavoidable," as that's...

All groups are different, but that sounds like something of an overstatement. D&D is a team game, and most players realize before they ever sit down that A) the actions of someone else's character can impact their own, and B) bad rolls of the dice happen.

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Fun fact, Set 5: Immortals (1986) let characters who had become immortals (i.e. gods) increase their ability scores up to a maximum of 100: Wrath of the Immortals (1992) kept that rule, albeit with some tweaking about how the bonuses were applied (the full rules for which are too long to...

AD&D 2E was very clear that ability scores went up to 25, which was their absolute maximum, and the tables in the PHB reflected that.

Including a sidebar devoted specifically to this topic (page 16) is not what "zero expectation" looks like.