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More the point was that "showing your work", as it were, exclusively after "your work" no longer communicates anything, won't really affect the trust-o-meter. It won't hurt, or at least it shouldn't if the players are reasonable. But nothing is really gained or sustained in the trust department...

That's almost certainly going to be an improvement, since your numerical bonus won't be used by mechanics nearly that much, so the GM can usually rely on giving that out when they want to reward clever thinking or beneficial conditions (and likewise to penalize unwise choices or harmful...

Sure, that's fair. I was mostly trying to create an example that was distinct from the "save my friend about to be sacrificed" thing, that would still demonstrate a similar experience of "wait so all that hard work I did was for nothing the entire time???" feeling that, even if it wouldn't be...

I joined late--the group needed a replacement for a player who had left, and we played for a couple levels before the GM decided "it really isn't that much different, let's try an epic game". That didn't last as long as I'd have liked because the GM realized "epic-level characters mean huge...

No, that's not what I had said, though I was the one who gave the example. My example was one where the player is fighting in a place where poison gas is present, and they have a random number of turns before it becomes unavoidably lethal but not instant death--so even if they beat their...

But this of course simply kicks the bias up to a higher plane of abstraction: assigning the odds. Which is already a significant domain of bias anyway. That very thing is the reason why I have to use such cumbersome phrases to explain why it is necessary that a meaningful chance of a result be...

Well, at least from where I'm coming from, they should have gone with a two- or three-tier system. I haven't thought enough about how a three-tier system would work to spell it out, but I have thought rather a lot about the two-tier version: Small bonus(/penalty) is +1 or maybe +2 Big...

And how can players distinguish that? Perhaps. As noted, you are insulated from a lot of things because your group has remained functionally unchanged for decades. Even on this site, which leans older, "traditional", and GM-centric, your experience is quite far from typical. Plenty of players...

I don't follow. Ahab was doomed and it's quite clear from the very beginning that he's doomed. Further--isn't this the very storytelling you claim to detest so? You're already turning this situation into a narrative arc!

Sure. But the core point remains: even from the very foundation of the hobby, even from the moment that what most folks see as the highest height of ultra-realism, generally-respected folks recognized that overly-laborious focus on realism wasn't actually productive. That there are, in fact...

No. What I mean is, Advantage and Disadvantage was used as the weapon of first resort. As in, it was THE go-to thing for functionally EVERY possible "here's a benefit" mechanic they gave to players. But it was also supposed to be the new GM's Best Friend, AND the new "this situation is helpful"...

And this, right here, is one of the things I find extremely frustrating about discussing game design. Note your comparison: literature. As in, you treat this as a purely creative enterprise, something that can only be critiqued in a very limited way and where analysis is (functionally)...

My favorite 3.5e/PF1e character was actually a monstrous hybrid shenanigan, but quite fun, with every part of the hybrid chosen for its thematic value rather than solely for power. The (brief) summary is, once he hit max level, Wizard 5 (Exploiter archetype, Void school)/Geomancer 10/Archmage...

No. But I expect that this will be a meaningful argument from within their own space that over-occupation with realism is not as productive a goal as some hold it up to be. There are a lot of people who uphold realism as being unequivocally the highest goal, that is, always higher than any...

"Appeal to authority" is only a fallacy if the authority is unsubstantiated. AKA, if I were to site Joseph Schmoe on the subject of double jeopardy in the United States and whether a mistrial will thus result in functional acquittal (due to the constitutional restriction against double jeopardy)...

The problem with this answer is that the limits are actually known, and the only random component is whether the actions will reach the win condition before they reach the loss condition. You know what your HP are, and even folks like Lanefan or Maxperson who very specifically don't tell their...

Well, if I may, there are two unanswered questions here, and a subsequent slightly different conception of this same thing to see if we're paying too much attention to the upholstery without paying attention to the engine, metaphorically speaking. Question 1: Does the player know that the...

While this isn't a bad thing, I can't really say it's that much of a good thing? Like if there are rules and the players have no idea what they are and far too little data to figure them out, I'm not really sure how that's that much different from not having rules at all. The players won't be...

No. An important figure frequently cited for his authoritative perspective on "traditional GM" play and whose name is often attached thereto (e.g. "Gygaxian naturalism"), commenting on the topic with a critical eye toward realism above all else, would be useful. Especially if it is as...

But this assumes that absolutely every "lowlight" moment always informs the next highlight moment, and further that nothing except those "lowlight" moments contributes anything at all. What is far more likely is that any given lowlight may have no effect at all, or some effect, or an awful lot...