Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7915381" data-attributes="member: 42582">This board has a stand-alone and very active D&D forum. This, though, is the General forum. The OP is known to anyone who has read his previous posts as a fan of Savage Worlds. He didn't mention D&D in his OP except as a (late) example of a trend to have character-oriented bells & whistles as elements of PC build. He didn't ask for advice about how to play D&D.And that's no real surprise. Discussing D&D is largely unhelpful to addressing the issues raised in the OP. It may be possible to use D&D as a vehicle for character-driven play - I did so in the second half of the 80s, non-coincidentally using Oriental Adventures (which has resolution mechanics that go beyond combat, traps and dungeon doors) and later a modified skill system for AD&D that I subsequently learned was modelled on Rolemaster. But if someone is having trouble getting character-driven play going, why would we want to talk about D&D except to the extent - fairly well-known - that it poses many obstacles to character-driven play. (In this thread I would say [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] has given the best account of them. All I would add/stress is that 5e D&D has no finality of player-initiated action resolution outside of combat.)In a thread about whether a certain sort of character-driven RPGing is possible, let's talk about systems and associated techniques that actually aim at that and reliably produce it.If I want to run a game that will give me the feel of Ben Hur, it's probably a limitation if the system doesn't have any way to resolve chariot races, or interactions with prophets and holy men.If the OP wants to run a character-driven game, it's a limitation if the system doesn't have the mechanics needed for the player to try (and perhaps fail) to put his/her PC's mark on the gameworld. If that domain of finality of resolution is confined to combat then that is going to be a pretty big bar to character-driven play.If it's always open to the GM to re-open the situation, re-enliven the stakes, treat nothing as resolved, then there can't be character-driven play of the sort referred to in the OP - ie the mechanical resolution of action declarations generating a dramatic arc. There can only be GM decision-making about what story to establish.</blockquote>

Verification