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I can't help but think PF2 really didn't understand the value of defaulting mechanics like Take 10, I suspect largely as a result of writing generic scaling difficulties into skill resolution. There's nothing wrong with riskless mechanics, but it's obviously bad to make them time consuming to...

Intent is expressed through action declaration; the process outputs a climb speed, which a player uses to change the situation somehow. The roll can only tell you about the results of a fixed process, the interaction of that process and the situation determines if intent is realized. The mistake...

This is the most effective summary of the divide I've read, on both points. Tying complication to mechanical interaction, instead of originating outside of interaction is the baseline point of incompatibility, and the point about competence is a good articulation of how I've always felt engaging...

I'm deeply skeptical of every attempt I've seen to marry gamist and narrativist mechanics. Narrativism seems to thrive when the act of resolution is fundamental uncertain; you're rolling dice because you want system input on how something should be. Gamist concerns are much better served when...

I don't think negotiation and iterated gambling are enough to hang a game (in the strong sense) on. You can do risk management well, but only if you settle it in a web of other supporting systems that provide a lot of agency to manipulate outcomes. There's more than "having the appearance of a...

I'd argue that's a pretty shallow way to look at "gamism" (a term I'm frankly pretty suspicious of in both the GNS and GDS senses). See, my critique of 4e is that it was not especially gamist, particularly outside of the crunchy combat; the skill system was a step toward generic resolution...

I'd argue that's more because gamist games have largely faded out entirely over the same period, or shrunk in scope to narrowly defined chunks of gameplay. Mostly I think those players have drifted off to board games.

Personally, I think Perception (and perhaps more controversially, Knowledge) clearly should be defenses. Hidden creatures or things (or unknown relevant details) should be rolling against PCs, and offered up immediately if they fail. Edit: But I also think an appropriate reward for investing...

I think I've explained myself poorly, that's my point precisely. There isn't a standard we've agreed on, and energy/design work is spent largely on pursuing new models or smashing together favored mechanics, instead of iterating on a fixed set of design goals. The framing of "modern design"...

There's an implicit assumption in here that I spend most of my time with RPGs (especially "modern" ones) beating my head against. There's nothing inevitable about the current set of design norms, on either "side" of this whole discussion. I don't need to submit that players should ever have...

This is the sort of thing I'd put cleanly in "rules" or "system" instead of GM guideline. The expectation the players have (not unreasonably) is that they should be able to express agency before consequence pins them down entirely. It shouldn't be incumbent on the GM to redesign the game on the...

I think that rather necessarily simplifies that "resolution" down to a pretty limited play space. Hard to have a seven step plan if you're inventing the opposition one step at a time, though I don't know if I've seen a game that actually separates content creation and interaction into separate...

Right, it's very clear you don't value those distinctions, but like, it's pretty obvious to me that those aren't the same things? I would make different choices of my primary goal was moment to moment presenting interesting things the table would enjoy, than I would if I was trying to create a...

I see we're jumping right back to extremes. It hardly seems controversial that authors wield more power than GMs. Is not the standard railroading critique "some GMs really should be writing books?" Perhaps "experience" and "author" are not the options we're picking between here.

Feels like we're into pretty meta territory, in that storyteller/not storyteller divide seems to be entirely down to the relationship between the GM and their output. I don't think we can or should remove the GM's intention and approach from any analysis of what they're doing. To be honest, I...

If I was interested in fighting the semantic battle for the appropriate use of language, I'd probably take the most umbrage at this use of "challenge." I'm not actually interested in trying to set a monopoly on any particular meaning, but there's real danger of conflating the sense I'd use the...

The rules that don't permit them. If the procedure for jumping is laid out, it is not given the GM to tell me I can or cannot jump over the pit, and it is not possible for the GM to be inconsistent about which pits I can put can't get over. The (somewhat valid) narrativist critique is "but the...

You know, it's funny because I think I usually get the opposite branding, despite being about as allergic to "rulings" conceptually as you can be. I was reading a blog a while back that made a compelling argument that my particular class of player is pretty much gone in the TTRPG space, as board...

Right, I'm with you here in that I draw a hard line between content and action resolution. I want plenty of guidance from a game on what I should put in the fictional setting, and absolute (and player facing) clarity on what happens when those elements interact. The emergence should come from...

It's very much still a story you experience instead of one you drive, though the writing is excellent. The gameplay is very satisfying though, very much building on the Paper Mario action command structure with a much bigger set of build choices.