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Pretty much every game I've ever played. Competitive Team Fortress 2 is for all intents and purposes a different game from the game ordinary players play due to bans, format and ruleset. No two tables play Uno by the same rules. All traditional games have miriads of regional variations. I've...

I don't know. I'm playing in two campaigns and running one and very rarely get anything but full table, but I consciously organize games around having more people than slots. It is a logistic issue, sure, but solvable one. 7 people (3v3 and a referee) isn't that many people. Hurt feelings are...

I'm not super convinced about some fundamental difference between RPGs and every other type of games. In my experience, pretty much everyone is absolutely certain their favorite flavor of games is completely unique and defies comparisons or analysis through other lenses. They are right, yes...

That aside, theories of games tend to be broadly applicable to all games in the genre. Whether you are playing Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone or now sadly dead Elder Scrolls: Legends, you are still thinking about tempo, card advantage, depriving your opponent of resources, controlling the board...

As another tangent, I find it baffling that two opposing teams, arbitrated by an Actually Neutral Referee are such an uncommon format of games. Pretty much all the issues that drain skill from RPGs (unknown and unknowable monster composition; a player at the table with unlimited power who isn't...

I wonder if a big part of this "skilled play" debacle is just a natural consequence of deficiency and anemia of roleplaying theory. Chess theory, fighting game theory, card game theory, Team Fortress 2 6v6 theory, you name it, aren't concerned with endless taxonomy of games like RPGing theory...

As a tangent, the most annoying part is that the word "meta" when used in RPG context is completely divorced of any broader definition of the word. Having a meta game, as in, some understanding of what options you are likely to encounter, is crucial for any skill-based game featuring extensive...

I think it's all too common case of people mostly correctly identifying their feelings, but being atrociously bad at determining their causes. Dungeon crawling allows for skill expression. A better player consistently wins, while worse players consistently lose, but the root of it isn't in some...

Yeah I've re-read spell description. Welp. I'd still say being able to use abilities that rely on sight (which, iirc, is most of spells in 5e) is a reasonable upside, even without removing adv/disadv on attacks. After all, Invisibility is also a level 2 spell, and thus a resource of similar...

As a tangent, realistically, I don't know about that. I'm not a big girlie (an average man is probably stronger than me, and an average adventurer absolutely is), but a flanged mace is a lot of weight at the end of a pretty long lever, and it'd be pretty hard for me to not inflict a lethal...

I can see it being played (and even intended) that way: seeing an invisible creature is better than, well, not seeing it, but hitting or defending against Predator-esque shimmering target is still hard.

What if it comes at the cost of greater connection to the fiction when taken holistically? I gave a grid movement example upthread, where trying to make an individual mechanic "make sense" in-universe lead to experience at large lose any tangible connection in terms of decision making to fencing.

It's not particularly uncommon to model miscellaneous threats differently from the main one in exercises. I recently was helping my friend organize security training (maybe I finally should take some of the lessons to life, but hey) where blue team was defending against an organized attack from...

No, they can pick and choose from a limited set of random options. As the crudest example, you level up and roll for 3 random classes. Maybe on a big table, maybe on three smaller ones like martial/arcane/divine. Pick one, gain a level in that class. It would force players to seek some...

Oh for sure. I wouldn't imagine players being particularly happy. It can easily be very clumsy. Randomizing how much progression you get is frustration city, but I'm thinking more about horizontal (or even orthogonal, as in, solving a different problem) options Within the existing dnd...

I feel like RPGs are basically synonymous with asinine layouting and even more asinine wording, and while they should be rightfully criticized for term-like words that are never defined anywhere, hanging up on them is an exercise in navel gazing.

Are we seriously discussing the narrative implications of using "destroy" to mean "remove from play"? Am I understanding this correctly?

Tangential to the railroading, but RE: zero to hero Yes, it's not exactly common to see such power progression (or, frankly, much power progression at all) outside of RPGs. Is that a bad thing? Raising a character from nothing to your desired build is, like, fun. I'd say an interesting area of...

What if taking a step back and neglecting such harmony on a level of a specific rule reveals harmony when evaluated in the context of other rules? Let's say there was a rule tying movement to attacks: to strike into specific cells, you have to move in a specific way, along X axis, or Y axis, or...

Is there an inherent value in creating one-to-one (or even approximation thereof) relation between the rules and the fiction? All design is compromises, sometimes you have to have a specific rule that doesn't make in-universe sense on its own but is a part of a larger model congruent with the...