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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7094227" data-attributes="member: 996">Flexibility & Illusionism It's more a matter of DMs being flexible.  You can hack D&D quite a bit, if you want to and have experience or theoretical knowledge to do it well.  The same goes for any system, but a lot more of us have a lot more experience hacking D&D, because it has been the dominant TTRPG for so long. Isn't that just insisting the two systems are different?  So BW makes it likely for PC to fail, and 5e (sometimes even criticized as 'too easy') makes it likely for them to succeed.  That doesn't make one more or less flexible than the other.  (And, really, how hard can be to shift something like chances of success?) The latter seems like conflict - between what's expedient and what fits those traits. Hit points/damage are one of D&D's less inflexible mechanics - they can represent anything that keeps the creature from being defeated, and anything that pushes it closer to defeat.  Fairly simple mechanics that can cover a lot of fictional ground = flexibility, no?  Sounds good (RQ) or awful (RM). ;P I thought you considered D&D a sim game?  It's certainly a classic game, by definition. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I don't buy that hacks and variants and other games using the same core system in any way equal flexibility in a game.  Flexibility exercised by the designers in the latter case or GMs in the former, sure, but not inherent in the system, itself.  If the game were flexible, you wouldn't need to hack it or publish a separate game to do a different genre or support a different style or whatever.Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention (no, I'm sure I haven't, I lack the patience), but it seems like the inflexibility of the various systems discussed in this thread had been the point.  Such-and-such a game plays a certain, specific way, to cater to a certain agenda or produce a certain result, and thus fill some sliver-like niche of the RPG market not already pinned down by the 500-lb gorilla, or not already lavishly catered to by some other, equally niche product.  While the 500-lb gorilla must remain inflexibly focused on looking, smelling, and acting the part of a gorilla, and weighing 500-lb (not 225 kg!), and squatting on the same share of the market, lest some 90 lb chimp temporarily take it's place.    There still could be.  It's like explaining how a magic trick is done, but still being able to pull it off well.  It goes from the sense of wonder "that's impossible!" to an appreciate of skill "wow, really well done!"But, in general, illusions work better when the audience doesn't know the trick, and the magician controls the scene.  The same goes for illusionism in running a game.  You can play a game above board and still use such techniques, the players become magicians-assistants instead of audience, but you lose something (or rather they lose something of the experience).  But you'll deliver a better experience if you limit what the players know of the processes, so they can fill in something more impressive and cool than the reality of how it was done.</blockquote>

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