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And there's something we can agree on :)

Which of my groups? My main historic 4e group has one member dead and another in another part of the country. My most recent 4e group did well until someone didn't just move over 100 miles away but stopped commuting that far each way every weekend just to play at the end of the campaign (about...

What actually happened was I pointed out that DH was a better Grimdark game than DH and provided a reason why. You apparently found a comparison to 5e here too much to bear and threw not particularly good rules against the wall in a desperate attempt to prove otherwise. I pointed out these were...

Where "a very small minority" is just about every table I have played with as player or GM. I wonder what I was doing that you aren't.

There is some pretty intense irony here when you tried desperately to prove in this thread that 5e was as good at being GrimDark as Daggerheart because I'd dared to criticise it on those grounds.

The thing here is that there are mechanics that can encourage story and mechanics that can harm story, and this is independent of whether the mechanics are meta. I find D&D has mechanics that harm story; hit points where you get hit and nothing happens except number ticks down. Classes and...

Except it didn't fall apart in reality in 4e IME but does in 5e. That's because 4e gave ways of working together that 5e doesn't have - and people want to do cool stuff. Provoke tactics (where e.g. a slippery rogue offers an opportunity attack to set up a fighter mark punishment) are cool...

Which, ironically, meant that 4e was the only edition of the game it was easy to remove the treadmill from. 4e gave answers, oD&D/1e gave tables which were kinda an answer. 3.X gave Wealth by Level. It's only 5e (and to a lesser extent 2e) that really ducks the question.

It is far easier to adjust your pacing in an improvised game, and not all module writers know how to pace things. So I'd expect the improvised games to average better pacing. I disagree. I consider there to be actual advantages when the PCs are woven into the setting rather than people who...

So are all the other games I listed. But no two groups (no two players) are quite the same.

"What about the other players?" is not really an issue; the other players are no less engaged if they are trying to take on Nosferatu the Vampire because they killed [PC's] mother than because they enthralled the realm's princess. And any sensible GM will share the spotlight even if not in a...

100% I would also say that you are also condensing two axes - collaborative scene building and pre-plotted arcs. For example someone running Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords (either edition) has vastly more of the story pre-plotted than any game of Fate I have ever seen and I would argue that...

IME it's a feature ... for groups who don't know each other before they start. Giving a little bit to everyone means that everyone who gets something. Like meeting at MacDonalds. But almost every group would be better off with something else once they've found what they all enjoy. I've yet to...

Yeah, "the sauce that makes D&D work" is being just a little bad but not actively terrible at everything. For example ToTM 5e drives me mad because I want to know exactly how big that 20' radius is or what I can line up with the lightning bolt - and 3.X is more dependent on ToTM because of...

First I'll say that 5e can do 90% 2e or 3.X can do for 30% of the effort. And (especially 2024) it's much better balanced with vastly superior rogues, monks, paladins, barbarians, and sorcerers (and warlock is the best class). Doesn't make me love it but it is a big improvement partly due to how...

I am saying that Poisoned does indeed cover a vast array of psychochemical states, far more different than burned to cut. One state won't cover PCP to a bad acid trip. And poison someone with warfarin and they don't get discombobulated so much as haemophiliac Poisoned as a condition is binary...

It could apply to physical and magical damage if we discarded hit points and just had a single hurt condition, possibly? But even then the effects of crack, the effects of curare, the effects of warfarin, and the effects of weed are monumentally different.

Because generalised poison is a ridiculous condition. Hemlock is very different from cyanide is very different from curare is very different from asbestos is very different from alcohol. One "Poisoned" condition blocks up design space although several adversaries might use the same or related...

Nope. The ruleset gives something that will happen. In the case of My Life With Master the story is that the Master (played by the GM) abuses the Minions (played by the players) until one of them snaps and tries to kill the Master. Who will snap? Why? How will they try to kill the Master? Will...

My Life With Master would be a counter-example. It's rare and only a few games do it (Masks springs to mind) but it happens.