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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9001939" data-attributes="member: 7023840">So I am going to address this, because this, again, is an example of why I think people often fail to communicate effectively on these threads.When we start with the statement, "D&D is also designed with a very specific goal ...." is where I think you will immediately get the pushback. Start with the basic premise in that statement that D&D is designed for a very specific goal. Right there ... that's kind of the issue. As I've mentioned before, a big issue in TTRPGs ("RPGs") is second-order design- in other words, the variance between the game as intended (designed) to be played and the actual play when used by the group.This problem can be approached in many ways- for example, extensive playtesting will often see how group will use the RPG. But given the lack of resources in RPGs (as compared to, say AAA videogames), this isn't foolproof. To use the Everway example, if every playtest group has a Tweet-level GM, then no one is going to notice that the game might not work so well with other groups. Another way is to tightly integrate the rules and the game- for example, while there are a lot of different PbTA games using similar rules (they are .... powered by a similar system), each game is modified to fit a particular genre and game paradigm, and, further, the rules themselves are heavy-handed in terms of codifying what we would call "best practices" in other RPGs. In other words, by explicitly narrowing the scope of play and by telling you, in essence, this is how you play the game and other ways are wrong ... those games ensure that the game is more likely to be played as the designer intended.For various reasons going back to the origin of the D&D as more of a toolkit than an actual complete game, and because of the reticence of the various editions to specify how to play, and because of the culture and community that allows "mix and match," however, this has never been the way with D&D. Other than, to some extent, 4e, there has always been room for a number of different approaches to D&D. So while it is correct to some extent to say that you could drift other games around, you run into the issue that (1) some games are designed to be "tighter" and therefore shouldn't be drifted around, and (2) some games just don't have the history of being drifted.</blockquote>

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