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Essentially, at any given moment, the player may choose to do anything (within the context of the fiction and rules). So if you decide ahead of time that Thing A Must Happen, you will almost surely run into situations where in order to make that to continue to be true, you are barred from...

Something I want to add: long stories are both granular and fractal. Just like a chapter in a novel might be a story in and of itself within a larger context, so might a particular adventure or session generate its own story within the larger context of the as-yet untold campaign story.

It is definitionally not a complete story.

That is not the same thing as saying they tried to recreate WoW's mechanics in 4E. At the time, WoW was decimating the TTRPG community. WoW was at its zenith and we all knew folks who abandoned TTRPGs for WoW guilds. Sometimes whole groups shifted over to WoW. So WotC was inspired to compete...

I do think that deciding that a thing will definitely happen -- or more specifically, that your character will definitely do a thing -- before it comes up in play does impinge upon player agency (at least insofar as I am defining it here). I agree that there is agency in the player choosing...

I would go so far as to say that most people who are discovering D&D now, their personal "appendix N" is full of things directly inspired by D&D itself, from video games to anime to Stranger Things.

This started in another thread but I thought I would spin it off into its own thread before it goes wild. What do you think of TTRPGs (broadly) in relation to "story." Are RPGs "stories." Are they "story generators"? Something else? How do the particular mechanics of a game interact with what...

I have never played Dungeon World, but isn't it a PbtA play-to-find-out game? If so, that makes it even LESS of a story than neo-trad 5E.

But a game isn't a story until it is over. RPGs generate stories by virtue of being played, but they aren't "A Story". Stories have beginnings, middles and ends. they have plots and characters, high and low points. None of that is true with RPGs except in retrospect. The story we tell about the...

It isn't a story until it is over.

Why? If you don't want it, you don't buy it. But folks who do can.

I don't think a d20 skill check is particularly helpful with wilderness exploration. You need a more robust system.

I don't think unified mechanics is good for its own sake. Mechanics should support the thing they are trying to emulate. Sometimes that works with a unified core mechanic. But sometimes you need something bespoke to get it right.

But do they do anything about it. 3.x had much more robust 3 pillar support. But that's obvious: 3.x had much better overall support. I guess one thing I dislike is the low level of support overall. Despite more customers than ever by orders of magnitude, we get very little support.

I think the fiction is usually ducking behind a thing or throwing yourself to the ground or putting up a shield just in time. That said, what if an AoE Dex save was a Reaction but you could move half your speed?

Have you never seen an action movie? Improvement is always on a continuum. You will NEVER improve by 10 pounds in one day. You train to get stronger and then one day you push your PR. When you test that determines how much you improved. You are arguing against a position no one has taken.

This is my favorite BSing game. You don't have to read cards or anything like that. just place your tile, drink your beer, and tell war stories.

Well, original 2E PHB art.

I knew it existed before 2E, I just could not remember where.

This. I require proficiency all the time to make certain checks.