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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9412209" data-attributes="member: 7006">Bingo.&nbsp; And we know this just by reading the pages and pages and pages of threads here with people sending inordinate amounts of time worrying about stuff like &quot;game balance&quot; and &quot;challenge ratings&quot;.&nbsp; All this talk about the mechanics-- making sure all the combats have all numbers within certain parameters to give every character and every archetype an equal chance of making sure they all contribute equally to every fight, with exactly the specific chances of survival or death for every character against every monster as calculated by the DM that they want to give their players so that they are &quot;challenged&quot;.And I'd say this is not even a matter of &quot;home game&quot; versus &quot;actual play&quot; separation.&nbsp; Rather it's each individual table's desire of &quot;board game&quot; versus &quot;theatrical drama&quot;.&nbsp; The former are those that find the drama coming out of playing the board game... and the latter are those that use the board game mechanics to help embellish and randomize the theatrical narrative the entire table is working together to create.&nbsp; More often than not I think Actual Plays (because they do have an audience watching) tend to be tables that emphasize and prefer the latter... but that's not always necessarily the case.&nbsp; And while there are a shitton of home games where the tables just want to roll dice and kill stuff and couldn't care less about the &quot;story&quot; going on in the campaign... there are many tables that do and their games look a lot like Critical Role in tenor or tone when all is said and done.&nbsp; And how much it looks like it is dependent on how prepped and prepared the individual DM is with the narratives happening in their game world... how willing the players are to just &quot;go with it&quot; and take the more dramatic-- if not more dangerous-- turn just because it looks and feels cool, it fits the motivations of their character, and they aren't concerned with trying to &quot;win&quot; every encounter they meet... and how good all the players are at improvisation (both in action and in dialogue.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 9412209, member: 7006"] Bingo. And we know this just by reading the pages and pages and pages of threads here with people sending inordinate amounts of time worrying about stuff like "game balance" and "challenge ratings". All this talk about the [I]mechanics[/I]-- making sure all the combats have all numbers within certain parameters to give every character and every archetype an equal chance of making sure they all contribute equally to every fight, with exactly the specific chances of survival or death for every character against every monster as calculated by the DM that they want to give their players so that they are "challenged". And I'd say this is not even a matter of "home game" versus "actual play" separation. Rather it's each individual table's desire of "board game" versus "theatrical drama". The former are those that find the drama [I]coming out[/I] of playing the board game... and the latter are those that use the board game mechanics to help [I]embellish and randomize[/I] the theatrical narrative the entire table is working together to create. More often than not I think Actual Plays (because they do have an audience watching) tend to be tables that emphasize and prefer the latter... but that's not always necessarily the case. And while there are a shitton of home games where the tables just want to roll dice and kill stuff and couldn't care less about the "story" going on in the campaign... there are many tables that do and their games look a lot like Critical Role in tenor or tone when all is said and done. And how much it looks like it is dependent on how prepped and prepared the individual DM is with the narratives happening in their game world... how willing the players are to just "go with it" and take the more dramatic-- if not more dangerous-- turn just because it looks and feels cool, it fits the motivations of their character, and they aren't concerned with trying to "win" every encounter they meet... and how good all the players are at improvisation (both in action and in dialogue.) [/QUOTE]

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