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I think the value in D&D is that it's the only recognizable IP from the tabletop hobby, and represents the gateway to an entire creative medium. Absent that context, I'm skeptical that anything about D&D has any real worth (though, to be fair, many esoteric IPs of limited merit have been...

It can. I've had a lot of success pushing narrative pace over the years. If D&D can be said to be glacially paced, I think that's probably a product of the game's culture first, of some specific mechanics second, and of the general format of a TTRPG little if at all. That is to say, if your...

I don't see that rpgs require prep work. That's something people do because they want to, not because they have to. Or just about any game really. That open-endedness is pretty exciting.

Of course there is a skill component; I don't expect that most people can sit down and reel off a masterpiece off the top of their heads on the first try. But trying to create a living, dynamic game experience from static prepared material is also a challenge that also requires various skills...

I think it's that rpgs are self-driven. You can make whatever characters and whatever scenario you want. As with most things in life, the more you put into it the more you're likely to get out of it. But how exactly you invest your time is customizable to what interests you personally (as...

I've come to look at a game session as being roughly equivalent to an episode of one of the big-scale serialized TV dramas (GoT being the obvious fantasy example). You're invariably spending a lot of time on minutiae when combat happens (just as fight scenes take a ton of time to shoot), and...

So you're suggesting that people don't know what their maximum Jump distance is or realize that they have roughly a 5% chance of reaching it? They don't recognize that people seem to be categorized in some class-based function based on what they can do? They don't know approximately how high of...

Even if we did want to completely dissociate hit points and go down this road, that logic still doesn't hold. If it's a matter of relative judgement, the PC's hp and capacity to deal damage presumably increase with his level, meaning that relative to a static opponent, the ratios shift in his...

A game show. The same format is also commonly used by comedy clubs and theater groups. There are plenty of other similar games that revolve around making stuff up surrounding preset prompts of some sort. I'm referring to "playing house"; i.e. the archetypical game that young children engage in...

Indeed. The DM is playing those characters. All of them. Roleplaying isn't just something that applies to one particular group of player characters.

Probably because you're looking. And looking for something that isn't really relevant to the point I was making. The lack of such a table is a limitation of the system, but it hardly means that XP is required It's not as if everyone who played 2e used XP tables. Leveling up whenever the DM...

Balance in the sense of parity of options for player characters anyway. It's very important, for example, that the game be balanced in such a way that the PCs can't do ridiculous things that ruin the game world. For example, if every PC had the ability to disintegrate objects by touch at level...

House, Whose Line is it Anyway, and Sim City. And, for that matter, most roleplaying games. Does anyone look at d20 Modern and think that a strong hero is balanced with a charismatic hero? That a CoC professor of archaeology is balanced with a soldier? That a BSG knuckledragger is balanced with...

And he's really talking about clarity and honesty. The problem with the Toughness feat is that it doesn't actually make you meaningfully tougher, and that the name and the next might mislead a newbie into thinking that it does. Thus, the need for guidance to show people how to select feats...

The relevant sum-up quote is: In other words, not remotely what's being suggested here. In fact, what he says regarding relative utility of character options is: There's nothing in there about "traps" or that would suggest that anything is "broken".

Wait, what? That sounds like the sort of thing that a DM might simply declare impossible (and indeed, might be a textbook example of an impossible action). I don't see that you have to accept that to play D&D at all. And I certainly don't think you have to accept a rogue of modest skill gaining...

Well, no. The chance of PC fatality is dependent on the difficulty level and the actions of the players. The rocket tag moniker again simply indicates combat that is fast and swingy, but that can still be slanted in the players' favor. Endless PC death sounds pretty archetypically D&D to me. It...

They are objects. Fictional objects to be sure, but in the relevant sense they are objects. Exactly my point. Gameplay requires that they have them all the time, or else you end up with some serious nonsense.

Are we to conclude that every NPC's hit points cease to exist every time he leaves the PCs' line of sight and then rematerialize the next time the PCs meet him? With exactly the same amount of damage? (Or not, depending on the circumstance). Come on, now. Surely, regardless of their gaming...

The terms "fantasy roleplaying game" and "world simulator with rules as physics" are synonyms. That being said, that's not what I was saying. Whether a minion corresponds to anything in reality or not is not the point. The point is that it isn't balanced with something that is not a minion (and...