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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8999730" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER]The proposition that a particular RPG system is more or less flexible than another, or than is typical, doesn't strike me as one that needs analysis and testing at a scientific level of scrutiny in order to assign some rough credence to it, particularly when the meaning of the proposition can be ascertained to a significant extent by the examples put forward by those who advance the proposition.It may be that the flexibility is confined to some dimension of comparison - but then it seems to me the onus is on those who are making strong claims about distinctive or notable flexibility to specify that dimension. If some of those dimensions are incommensurable, well so much the worse for the flexibility comparisons.Of RPGs that I know, one that I would say is not particularly flexible in play, in the sense that it relies heavily on rather prescriptive procedures that are not easy to change or adapt in real time (either player or GM side) is Rolemaster.Burning Wheel is, in comparison, more flexible in play in that it can basically do everything that RM does (somewhat less colourful injury, but it still gives plenty of detail) but permits much more latitude in zooming in or out at the scene and resolution level.Things that I note about most versions of D&D that make me dispute its relative flexibility: being designed for party play, it struggles with non-party play; relying heavily on rather granular resolution (both space and time), it can struggle with non-party play, with deliberate scene-framing (4e famously made some changes to handle this), etc; from the point of view of pacing and "story", it has no canonical system for dialling consequences up or down based on narrative weight or context, nor for zooming in our out based on narrative weight or context.These are features of a system that are highly salient in RPGing, given their importance to the setting-character-situation relationship. There are plenty of RPGs that easily handle these issues. The fact that D&D doesn't easily handle them is a mark against its relative flexibility.If someone thinks those features aren't relevant; or what they mean by D&D's flexibility is that - as an empirical conjecture - many D&D players will cheerfully accept mechanically unregulated stipulations by the GM about how things happen in the fiction, and/or will cheerfully accept suggestions for new mechanical procedures that are proposed by the GM; fair enough I guess. But that doesn't seem a very interesting claim, then, about comparisons between RPG systems - as opposed to, say, about what sorts of preferences of various RPGs tend to have.</blockquote>

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