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I see those items as, ideally, to a greater or lesser extent taking you beyond what you can otherwise normally achieve. Otherwise, what's the point? I mean, your Fighter's up to 20 Str already, where does she go from there? Girdle of Giant Strength: bam - Str 25 coming online! There's...

In other news, it's Tuesday... :)

I'd say the answer to "What does a simulation do?" is more like "It models, as best as it can, how something would happen were it happening in reality." A flight simulator is just that: a simulator that models, as best it can, how flying works in reality; with the goal of allowing people to...

Not our fault the designers got it wrong. IMO Luck - as in the Halfling trait - is a hideous mechanic.

When a real-world archaeologist walks into a chamber that has some runes on the wall those runes already say something, and what they say was locked in when they were first carved. The archaeologist just has to figure out what they say; and either can or cannot do so. In the game example, it's...

Oftentimes, this is indeed correct. Starting with 3e the game has taken professions (armourer, baker, etc.), natural abilities (athletics, persuasion, etc.), common life skills (swimming, riding, etc.), and trained abilities (open locks, hide in shadows, etc.) and lumped them all under the...

Given the extreme degree of in-game variability of situation and circumstance where a check might be made, I'd posit the mechanics almost have to be and remain silent as to guidance of the fiction; as guidance appropriate to one situation would inevitably be near-useless for a boatload of other...

It is dumb, but then how much use (and-or how survivable) is a low-strength Fighter going to be during the time before a strength device shows up? That's a fairly big player-side gamble, I think. That, and if someone's rolling up a warrior type and doesn't put at least a half-decent stat into...

Errr...stupid question, maybe, but why would it say anything like that in the PHB when only the DM can call for rolls? Or did that get changed such that players can call for rolls now?

I agree that part of what the d20 roll simulates is luck, and disgree (in part due to the previous clause!) that a d20 test rejects simulation. As for the reasons for rolling: for me if a) the outcome is uncertain and b) something would materially change on one or the other of success or...

I'm fairly sure you weren't told that by me, though; as that's not my position. In fact, it's fairly close to the opposite; I see luck as being a significant factor in a lot of this, along with day-to-day variables in performance - "some days you got it, some days you don't". Otherwise, once...

The bolded, all day long; and if the player's unhappy because of having gambled and lost, tough tooties.

This comes down to whether one is prioritizing the story of one's character or of the campaign as a whole. My own take is that a character's story can start, happen, and end while the campaign's story rolls on. I'm a big fan of the "stable of characters" concept. Also, IMO a campaign or...

What this ignores, though, is the idea of there being external factors that ruined what otherwise would have been a perfect shot. An imperfection in the table rail that caused a slightly off-angle rebound. An unnoticed bit of potato chip on the table that slightly altered the course of your...

These are always good. I sometimes find my long-term characters switching between static and story-resolving and back depending on the ebb and flow of what's going on in the game. Which is fine, but doing so doesn't require a whole new campaign. What's stopping you from playing one or more...

That might be in part because they threw out all the data from the older - and thus likelier to be longer-term players - respondents.

What level spell is this one? :)

The TSR editions (other than BECMI) tended to kinda tap out around 12th if not sooner, with the "sweet spot" being about 3rd-8th. 3e extended the sweet spot up to maybe 11th but also made level advancement much faster, thus the actual number of session spent playing in that sweet-spot range...

Correct. I have a second, DM-side version of the map with lots more info on it. This is one of those "fill in a blank spot on the map" situations. The treasure is on a small, otherwise unremarkable, and as yet unvisited island off the coast of the main region where things have been based; and...

This seems to come down to a simple question of whether diegetics can survive being put through the strainer of the abstractions we need in order to play the game. I'd somewhat hesitantly say that they can, most of the time, for purposes of determining what is diegetic and what isn't.