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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8318928" data-attributes="member: 6801252">I wasn't suggesting that you should treat my lack of experiencing it as an argument, it was more an explanation of why your argument didn't land with me personally. Incidentally, I play Story Now games too, chiefly Masks: A New Generation, though BITD is in the process, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming Last Airbender Tabletop as well. Having experience in both makes it feel a lot like the difference is that traditional games (4e, 5e, Pathfinder 2e, I can't speak to any other traditional RPGs, except COFD I guess if that counts) tend to impose constraints that don't tend to constrain you from the things you want to do with them. Like ok, one example thats come up on the forums before is one user pointing out that Blades doesn't work for them because it very specifically does not want you to meticulously plan the heist, that is the basis of the flashback system and stress, and the lack of conventional inventory-- your expenditure of stress is how the system emulates planning. So, you have to deal with the consequences to that system (and therefore to the vice stuff) if you handle that differently, and they very much want to plan the heist manually and have preperation be a player skill. But DND could be used for either the game play of pre planning the heist, or NOT pre planning the heist, nothing breaks in either direction, and some parties play with strict inventories, while others focus more on what it would be reasonable to have-- its design doesn't yeet itself into your way in either direction. The assumptions that it does make are, in my opinion, suited for a wider array of experiences, if I run into things I can't do, its due to not being suited to the milieu of non-contemporary fantasy, rather than the mechanics interfering with my ability to provide a play experience. That is to say, I can perform preparation heavy, referee impartial 'Right to Dream' simulation, I can perform dark fantasy that pretty much captures horror particularly if I'm willing to throw encounter balance out the window and be clear about the need to retreat, I can do anime style empowered romps, I can do combat-lite intrigue or personal drama games where the mechanics fade into the background until they're needed, I can do heists either fast paced and loose, or meticulous and carefully planned or anywhere in between, I can focus on the joy of deeply tactical combat, or leave that by the way side with undemanding fights, we can explore the druid's relationship with her wizard father, or the rogue and warrior's romance to one another, I can do war stories, and dungeon crawls with oppressive atmosphere, I can do crafting and survival, I can explore social justice themes or philosophy, I can explore either side of a colonial conflict, I can do sailing and pirates, I can do espionage, I can do archaeology, I can do mysteries, and absurdist madness. I'll be real with you? I've yet to have had a narrative experience that matches our 4e game. The implicit insistence is that the stories produced by traditional games, particularly in [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER]'s recent post, don't support Bleed as well... hasn't been my experience, its actually been pretty hard for me to bleed in these other games, and a big part of why is that the mechanics are so ever present my brain keeps analyzing them instead of slipping into the fiction. If as Edwards once suggested, the mechanics are a 'prosthetic' for our damaged ability to tell stories (which I'm still not crazy about, but its a useful analogy here) its like trying to use the 'prosthetic' on top of a fully functioning limb-- especially since I come from a freeform play by post background, often 'playing to find out what happens' using the mechanics is taking the story in directions that are less interesting to me, the authorship is part of the fun.Thats why traditional games are a lot more intuitive to me I guess, they compartmentalize mechanics differently.</blockquote>

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