D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.

[EzekielRaiden]

In principle, it's possible to have enough grounding in TRPGs that you can comment on a game that you've read but not played (general "you" all around) but in practice almost no one has that much grounding in TRPGs, most will have some element of play that will turn out to work differently at the table than you (again, general, sorry) thought it would from reading it. Obviously someone commenting on a game they've read but not played would probably be best served to clear about that in their comments.

Sure. And if one is making simply very high-level, abstracted responses, I can see there being warrant. For example, I haven't played Numenera or any of its sister systems, but I do have a very negative perception of three of its mechanics, namely, GM Intrusions, the express intent that XP should be split between temporary and permanent rewards, and the extreme punitive effects of holding too many consumables. That doesn't mean I know how it actually plays out at the table, and it's certainly possible that a very deft GM could use these tools productively...but I do think they come from incorrect understandings of general game design principles. (E.g. if you have to be punitive in order to stop a perverse incentive...you should really just change the incentives so that people don't have a perverse one in the first place.)

The Intrusions present a pretty good opportunity to talk about the analysis of game design stuff, because right in the very text, we get the immediate mention of the mechanic being trivial to abuse if the GM isn't cautious (emphasis added in both quotes):

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There are two ways for the GM to handle this kind of intrusion. You could say "You're standing in the wrong place, so make a roll." (It's a Speed defense roll, of course.) Alternatively, you could say "You're standing in the wrong place. The floor opens under your feet, and you fall down into the darkness." In the first example, the PC has a chance to save themselves. In the second example, they don't. Both are viable options. The distinction is based on any number of factors, including the situation, the characters involved, and the needs of the story. This might seem arbitrary or even capricious, but you're the master of what the intrusion can and can't do. RPG mechanics need consistency so players can make intelligent decisions based on how they understand the world to work. But they'll never base their decisions on GM intrusions. They don't know when intrusions will happen or what form they will take. GM intrusions are the unpredictable and strange twists of fate that affect a person's life every day.

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Using (and Not Abusing) GM Intrusion
(Cypher System Rulebook, page 410)

Too much of a good thing will make the game seem utterly unpredictable—even capricious. The ideal is to use about four GM intrusions per game session, depending on the length of the session, or about one intrusion per hour of game play. This is in addition to any intrusions that are triggered by players rolling a 1.

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Note the repeated reference to "capricious" usage. That's a serious problem, which the text basically wishes away with "well, just don't do that, 4head." GM Intrusions are beyond merely a powerful tool, they're one of the most powerful possible tools, which is given with the tiniest fig-leaf of "don't abuse it!" and zero context for how you would...y'know...not actually DO the abusive usage. Given the authors themselves felt the need to repeatedly talk about abusive usage, but spent no time actually...y'know...showing you how to avoid abusive usage, it seems pretty fair to criticize the system for including an easily-abused power with little to no guidance on how to avoid being abusive. I don't think you need to have played Numenera to criticize that.

I do, however, think that my opinion about the "casting-from-HP"-type rules in Numenera (where you are expected to sometimes "spend" your stats for the day out of your three attributes--burning them for the day, not forever, more or less) require actual in-play experience to criticize, because the issue is all about the actual rate at which you spend this stuff vs the risk that you get caught in a death spiral. I have been told by multiple other people that the "death spiral" thing just doesn't happen in play, even though I struggle mightily to understand how it wouldn't be a constant issue. Their actual play experience trumps my theoretical worries, at least in the field of discussion--I certainly still consider it a huge risk, which is part of why I have no interest in playing the Cypher system.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Where for me "It's what my character would do" is the whole of the law.

And that law definitely doesn't give players carte blanche to be the most horrible dicks to one another, or to the GM?

Coming from you, I'm genuinely shocked. This phrase is, perhaps more than any other, the one most likely to be abused by players--because it gives them unfettered freedom to do any action, no matter how disruptive to the group, no matter how disruptive to your campaign, no limits.

Thing is, because you let it pay off once the player now has a very justifiable argument that their clever idea or rules interaction should pay off every time they can pull it off. You've set a precedent, and going back on that is likely to produce resentful players.

Not at all. "That depended on the specifics of the situation at the time...which is what I said, at the time."

Narrowly-tailored rulings are a dime a dozen in common law.