Mearls' Legends and Lore (or, "All Roads Lead to Rome, Redux")

[Beginning of the End]

From time to time I've also borrowed from another poster (I can't remember who) the phrase "just in time GMing" to describe this approach - the point of this phrase is to make clear the contrast to exploration-based play. In my preferred game, the role of the GM is not to create a world for the players to explore (using their PCs as vehicles) but rather for the GM to create and shape situations that engage the players' thematic concerns (as expressed via their PCs). The gameworld is therefore created on a "just in time" basis, in response to those expressed thematic concerns.

You seem to be drawing an equation between improv-based play ("just in time GMing") and a specific flavor of narrativist gaming ("engaging thematic themes") that I'm not really following.

I can see how both can co-exist, obviously. But they're tangentially related to each other.

3E does not support this style of play particularly well - for example, it has no mechanism whereby the player can set the thematic tone of the game and oblige the GM to engage it (cf Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies in 4e, not to mention classes like the Warlock, the Avenger or the Invoker), and its mechanics favour scene extrapolation, and hence exploration, over scene framing (cf skill challenges, not to mention the whole approach to combat encounter design and resolution, in 4e).

Can you articulate the distinction you see between picking a paragon path and picking a prestige class in terms of the player "setting the thematic tone of the game"?

Can you explain exactly how the mechanics of 4th Edition explicitly support "scene framing" vs. "scene extrapolation"? Could you point to demonstrations of this technique being employed in the adventures written by the designers of 4th Edition?

As is pretty well known, 4e combat (...) has a distinctive pace: the monsters start out very strongly, putting the PCs on the ropes, but at a certain point into the combat the tide turns, as the PCs' resilience - manifested paradigmatically but not exclusively by their healing-surge based abilities including second wind - kicks in.

Can you explain what any of that has to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

I've got nothing against a system in which grappling a giant squid is a challenge even for a very experienced warrior - but in my view it doesn't sit very well side-by-side with the fact that the warrior in question can routinely walk away from 50' or 100' drops onto solid ground.

Can you explain how the inability for a high level fighter to grapple a giant squid interferes with your ability to do "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

I'll admit that I may be having difficulty grasping your point because I find Czege's description of scene-framing to be complete and utter . If you took his description at complete face-value, he's advocating an approach where Scene 2 has absolutely no logical connection to Scene 1 which immediately proceeded it. I find it difficult to imagine taking any game played that way seriously for more than a couple of minutes.

Once you accept that Czege has abused hyperbole to the point where it's obscuring his actual point, I still have some difficulty processing Czege's position because he bases most of his rhetoric around a constrast of "GM controls point A, players control point B" with "players control point A, GM predetermines point B". He's playing a shell game of, "Where do ya want your railroad?" But my gut reaction to Czege is pretty much a constant subliminal refrain of, "Take your railroad and stuff it."

So if your point really does boil down to, "4E is better than 3E for GMs who want to railroad their players in very specific ways." I'm willing to believe it. But you still haven't made your case.

And that's ignoring a whole host of other considerations, like the fact that 4e is designed in all sorts of ways - from spell lists to encounter buidling guildelines - to make scry-teleport-ambush a tiny part of the game, whereas the design of 3E very strongly encourages scry-teleport-ambush as the optimal mode of play at mid-to-high levels.

This does begin to make sense, though. Since you specifically want to be able to shamelessly railroad your players, it makes sense that abilities which allow the players to avoid your shameless railroading would be problematic for you.

Skill challenges are, among other things, a device for framing and resolving scenes without having to play out all the details of scene extrapolation, whereas 3E has no comparable mechanic. They achieve this precisely in virtue of their structure, which governs the injection of complications into a situation by the GM, as well as the way in which players respond to those complications (via their PCs' skill checks).

3E, on the other hand, relies upon either scene extrapolation (which may permit protagonism, but is often tedious rather than heroic) or else GM handwaving (which may or may not be heroic, depending on what the GM narrates, but is the opposite of protagonism).

This becomes an interesting point, because it gets to the heart of my problem with the skill challenge mechanics: They specifically interfere with the GM's ability to frame scenes. On the one hand, they violate the chain of causal logic which allows me to suspend disbelief and actually participate in the game world. On the other hand, they frequently become tedious when they mandate that play continues even after the scene has functionally exhausted and resolved itself in the minds of the players.

You know the bit where Czege talks about ending a scene when you've done all the interesting stuff you can do with it? Good advice. And skill challenges muck that up.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Good for them. It's only when people want to kick one edition or another out of the tent for not playing to their strengths that we have problems.

Oh dear. You seem to be confused.

Allow me to explain the analogy for you:

"Tent" = "Current Edition of the Game Supported by WotC"

Now, re-read your message and see if it makes any sense at all.

 

[Nagol]

I think Nagol's point still holds, however. Given that training is only +5, and at level 11 item and power bonuses are probably no higher than +4, it is going to be fairly rare for a party to have a better shot at a DC 29 check than at a DC 19 check, even if the latter is in an untrained, unoptimised skill.

On the other hand, to be fair to the Jester, most of the DCs are in the 19 to 23 range, which is within the tolerance for stat, training, item and power bonuses. And the DC 29 countermagic attempt, which is outside that range, also earns two successes - depending on whether or not the players have a sense of how hard but how worthwhile this might be to achieve (and that would depend on the Jester's approach to GMing this challenge), that could well be worth going for, perhaps concentrating a variety of party resources and actions in order to pull it off.

The only DC in the Jester's challenge that strikes me as problematic is the DC 27 Insight check. If I was running this I might be inclined either to lower the DC, or else to make the consequences of failure a -2 on the next check, or to increase by 1 or 2 the DC of all subsequent navigation checks, or something of that sort.

Let's assume the group's trained skills are at +13.

If the group has a character with Nature and decides to use it for navigation (DC 19), their success chance (ignoring the ghouls for a moment) is about 67%.

The same group deciding to use Perception instead, all else being equal, has a success chance around 22%. That's from a DC that's 4 higher.

Let's assume the group's trained skills are at +17.

Thet can only fail the Nature check on a 1. Their success chance is over 99% if they think to use that skill for navigation and take no other interesting choices.

The same group deciding to use Perception instead, all else being equal, have a success chance around 67%.

The probabilities get worse (and quickly!) if the group earns failures from the ghouls.

The wide variation in success rate from DC in-line with each other for a skill challenge suggests the careful DM better run the numbers prior to play to understand the effect of his DC choices and other challenge interactions on probable group success. That runs counter to the impromptu "just-in-time design" feel you have been advocating for the game.

Skill Challenges, in the form presented, have the feeling of a DM trap to me. The typical DM won't have the numeracy to see the consequential effect a small penalty / bonus has on probability for group success and is likely to set up situations with probable success rates at odds with his preference. This is especially true if it is done at the table in the heat of play.

 

[pemerton]

You seem to be drawing an equation between improv-based play ("just in time GMing") and a specific flavor of narrativist gaming ("engaging thematic themes") that I'm not really following.

I can see how both can co-exist, obviously. But they're tangentially related to each other.

They're not the same thing. They are more than tangentially related, however, because in order to respond to the outcome of a given player-driven scene, it is necessary to frame a new scene on the fly. The elements of that scene may on may occasions be pregiven (eg some key NPCs, perhaps even a key location) but the details won't be, as they arise out of what happened previously.

A robust system of encounter-building guidelines based on level appropriate DCs helps with this. A simulationist system makes it harder, because either (i) the simulation gets the DCs wrong relative to level and pacing considerations, or (ii) building in enough additional factors(eg in a combat or other physical challenge, perhaps weather or lighting) to make the simulation generate the right numbers for pacing and level considerations takes too much time. (This is based on my own experience of the differences between running Rolemaster and running 4e.)

Can you articulate the distinction you see between picking a paragon path and picking a prestige class in terms of the player "setting the thematic tone of the game"?

My understanding is that a prestige class is (i) subject to GM approval, and (ii) tends to require the PC to achieve the requisite backstory in the course of play (the non-mechanical prerequisites for many prestige classes). Of course, (ii) is another avenue for the GM to control access to the class, given that the GM is typically the final arbiter on the world design and encounter design consideratins that would determine whether or not (ii) can be satisfied.

Paragon paths have neither (i) or (ii). That's the difference. And it is consistent with a more general difference in tenor of the two rulesets as to where this sort of control over the fiction is located.

Can you explain exactly how the mechanics of 4th Edition explicitly support "scene framing" vs. "scene extrapolation"? Could you point to demonstrations of this technique being employed in the adventures written by the designers of 4th Edition?

Skill challenges for overland travel are one obvious example. A published instance I'm familiar with is Heathen in one of the early free online Dungeons.

The healing mechanics are another. Both short rests and extended rests - which separate healing from any ingame activity or use of resources - open up much greater flexibility for scene framing, and reduce the impact of ingame causal considerations on the transition from scene to scene (again, the contrast here with Rolemaster and AD&D is very stark - 3E, with its wands of CLW, might make the contrast less stark, but I don't know that wands of CLW contribute very much to a feeling of heroic protagonism).

These two techniques can in fact be combined so that - for example - the consequence of a failure in an overland travel challenge is inability to get an extended rest. Which then allows what are, in the gameworld, encounters that occur on different days (and therefore not threatening to verisimilitude in their temporal proximity) to be, in mechanical terms, encounters drawing on the same bundle of daily resources. This is harder to achieve in a game where healing is heavily simulationist and closely linked to the ingame activity of the PCs, and in which skill checks and their contribution to overland travel are also handled in a much more micro-detail fashion.

What I've just described can't be done in Rolemaster (unless the GM suspends the normal action resolution rules) without going through all the minutiae of the skill checks to determine whether or not the PCs find a place to rest, succeed in getting to sleep, make their RRs against getting woken by biting insects and hooting owls, etc etc. The core 3E rulebooks don't, to me, suggest that 3E plays any differently from RM in this regard.

Can you explain what any of that has to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

It allows, for example, a player to play a ranger, whose knowledge of the wilderness contributes importantly to the party's survival, without the actual play experience at the table bogging down into tedious minutiae about setting up campsites.

In the combat case, it allows players to build and play PCs whose protagonism is expressed via their choices in combat - this is always likely to be fairly central to a D&D game, given what D&D is about - without getting bogged down in (i) high search-and-handling time minutiae, and (ii) excessive grittiness. The combat pacing feeds into this. The way in which the PCs rebound in combat - what powers do they use, against whom, synergising with whom, at what potential costs - is part of what narrativist play in D&D involves (if you don't want combat in your narrativism, don't play D&D!).

I'll admit that I may be having difficulty grasping your point because I find Czege's description of scene-framing to be complete and utter . If you took his description at complete face-value, he's advocating an approach where Scene 2 has absolutely no logical connection to Scene 1 which immediately proceeded it. I find it difficult to imagine taking any game played that way seriously for more than a couple of minutes.

<snip>

So if your point really does boil down to, "4E is better than 3E for GMs who want to railroad their players in very specific ways." I'm willing to believe it. But you still haven't made your case.

<snip>

Since you specifically want to be able to shamelessly railroad your players, it makes sense that abilities which allow the players to avoid your shameless railroading would be problematic for you.

Look, if you want to insult my GMing and tell me that I run a crappy game using a crappy ruleset, just come out and say it. Naturally I disagree - and I don't see how you'd know, given that I don't believe we've ever played together, or indeed that you've ever met any of my players, or that you've even engaged with any of my many many actual play examples that I've posted over the years. I linked to one or two of them a few posts upthread - have a look and then come back and explain to me where the railroading is.

On another recent thread - about the contrast between values play and challenge play - you asked what a non-challenge-based game would look like. I don't know if the question was serious or not. I assume that you have at least a passing familiarty with games like HeroWars/Quest, and Maelstrom Storytelling, and therefore are aware that there are successful, viable non-challenge based RPGs out there. I assume that you also know that they play in much the way that Czege describes and that I am suggesting is the sort of play that 4e supports better than 3E - namely, comparatively hard scene-framing with open-ended and player driven scene resolution.

If you think that there is no difference in play between those games and (for example) AD&D or Rolemaster or 3E, then I'm baffled. If you think that there is such a difference, but that 4e doesn't resemble those games in any respect, then explain why not. As it happens, I think that in its core play 4e - despite some superficial resemblances to 3E and earlier editions - is closer to those sorts of games than it is to any earlier version of D&D.

As for the suggestion that this sort of game either (i) disavows coherent links between scenes, or (ii) is all about railroading, I'll post another quote (this time from Ron Edwards):

Content authority - over what we're calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom

Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content . . .

Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player

Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . .

There is no overlap between those four types of authority. They are four distinct phenomena. . .

I was working with a relationship map, not with a plot in mind. I had a bunch of NPCs. Whatever happened, I'd play them, which is to say, I'd decide what they did and said. You should see that I simply gave up the reins of "how the story will go" (plot authority) entirely. . . [but] I scene-framed like a mother-f*****. That's the middle level: situational authority. That's my job as GM . . . players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing.

And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority, like the guy's mask coming off in my hypothetical example [of a dramatic revelation] above . . .

I think [good gaming in this style of play] has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . . It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared]I[maginary]S[pace] are worth anyone's time.​

As a general rule, one necessary condition for a scene to be worth anyone's time is that it follow, in some meaningful fashion, from what has gone before. Also, given that in the sort of game I'm talking about players exercise plot authority, and therefore (indirectly) content authority - because once some piece of the plot is established it can't be undone - there is a further constraint on scene framing.

The whole tone of your post implies that I'm mistaken in my views as to what 4e can do as a system, its strengths, and its differences from more simulationist systems. And maybe I am - the human capacity for self-deception knows few limits! But it seems strange to me that you simultaneously deny that 4e can deliver the same play experience as 3E, and deny those actual examples of difference that a fairly experienced 4e GM is putting forward. What are the differences, then?

 

[pemerton]

Skill Challenges, in the form presented, have the feeling of a DM trap to me. The typical DM won't have the numeracy to see the consequential effect a small penalty / bonus has on probability for group success and is likely to set up situations with probable success rates at odds with his preference. This is especially true if it is done at the table in the heat of play.

Nagol, obviously there is nothing wrong with your maths. And I am a pretty numerate GM, and occasionally do make the effort to calculate odds of success for a skill challenge based on the PCs' bonuses in the likely relevant skills.

In practice, though, it would be unusual for a party to attempt all Percpetion, or all Navigation. Also, if the guidelines in the rulebooks are followed, then the differences beteen the DCs will typically not be present in the way they are in the Jester's example, and will be driven not by the sorts of simulationist concerns that appear to be governing that example, but by pacing and story concerns (eg in the rules as published, DCs for repeat attempts at a given skill by a given PC go up).

So while I agree that there can be the sort of maths trap you talk about, I think that to the extent that it arises, it is a bit different from the Jester's example (assuming the published rules are adhered to). And in general I haven't found it to be an issue in game (which is, of course, not to say that it's not just passing under the radar!).

 

[Nagol]

Nagol, obviously there is nothing wrong with your maths. And I am a pretty numerate GM, and occasionally do make the effort to calculate odds of success for a skill challenge based on the PCs' bonuses in the likely relevant skills.

In practice, though, it would be unusual for a party to attempt all Percpetion, or all Navigation. Also, if the guidelines in the rulebooks are followed, then the differences beteen the DCs will typically not be present in the way they are in the Jester's example, and will be driven not by the sorts of simulationist concerns that appear to be governing that example, but by pacing and story concerns (eg in the rules as published, DCs for repeat attempts at a given skill by a given PC go up).

So while I agree that there can be the sort of maths trap you talk about, I think that to the extent that it arises, it is a bit different from the Jester's example (assuming the published rules are adhered to). And in general I haven't found it to be an issue in game (which is, of course, not to say that it's not just passing under the radar!).

It's hard for me to comment on the rules as written; I only have the original PHB/DMG and I know that skill challenges were revised later which I haven't followed.

The trap is a trap because it's subtle. If the PCs do not initially know the optimal choice and a range of skills are available at a range of DCs (even if they are all within 4 of each other), the probability of success in the encounter is all over the map depending on their initial blind choices and follow up actions. Its very swingy and hard to recover once the encounter starts to go poorly.

The alternatives are to provide almost all choices with the same chance of success (tailoring the encounter to group skills but removing tactical choice from the challenge), assign the same DC to almost all skills (promoting strategic skill selection for the group), or provide a default 'hard' skill DC and reward innovative skill choice with a lower DC (encouraging tactical skill play while leaving the DM with an understanding of the likely outcomes).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh dear. You seem to be confused.

Allow me to explain the analogy for you:

"Tent" = "Current Edition of the Game Supported by WotC"

Now, re-read your message and see if it makes any sense at all.

I was going to respond to some other posters, but then I saw this. I think you mostly covered it.

I would only change "Tent" to "Any Edition of the Game Supported by WotC", so that, IMHO, they would be enlarging the tent by making available pdf sales of previous editions.

The OGL, IMHO, is the only thing that we've seen which permanently enlarged the tent, and that was WotC's doing.....although a different group of WotC doers.


RC

 

[pemerton]

The alternatives are to provide almost all choices with the same chance of success (tailoring the encounter to group skills but removing tactical choice from the challenge), assign the same DC to almost all skills (promoting strategic skill selection for the group), or provide a default 'hard' skill DC and reward innovative skill choice with a lower DC (encouraging tactical skill play while leaving the DM with an understanding of the likely outcomes).

I think that the default, by the published rules, is towards the first of your options - because the default DC is Moderate, and most PCs will have comparable skill bonuses in their best trained skills (good stat +5 for training).

You're right that this makes tactical choice in the challenge less important. In my experience - and I don't know how representative this is, because my impression is that skill challenges play very differently at different tables - choices matter for story reasons rather than tactical reasons. For example, the diffrence between Diplomacy and Intimidate isn't a tactical one (in my party, for example, the paladin has the same skill bonus in both) but rather - do I want this NPC to like me and therefore do want I want, or to be scared of me and therefore do what I want? That's often an important choice, but not for tactical reasons.

 

[Beginning of the End]

They're not the same thing. They are more than tangentially related, however, because in order to respond to the outcome of a given player-driven scene, it is necessary to frame a new scene on the fly. The elements of that scene may on may occasions be pregiven (eg some key NPCs, perhaps even a key location) but the details won't be, as they arise out of what happened previously.

Previously you were equating "just in time GMing" with "engaging thematic concerns".

You are now equating "frame a new scene on the fly" with "engaging thematic concerns".

Since, AFAICT, "just in time GMing" and "frame a new scene on the fly" are just synonyms for each other, you have not actually explained the connection. You are just posting tautologies.

To repeat myself: Yes, I can see that "just in time GMing" can be used to "engage thematic concerns". But "just in time GMing" can also be used to do other things. And thematic concerns can be engaged using other techniques.

A robust system of encounter-building guidelines based on level appropriate DCs helps with this. A simulationist system makes it harder, because either (i) the simulation gets the DCs wrong relative to level and pacing considerations, or (ii) building in enough additional factors(eg in a combat or other physical challenge, perhaps weather or lighting) to make the simulation generate the right numbers for pacing and level considerations takes too much time.

I was initially going to point that "set the DC and then explain what the DC means" works in either case to support "just in time DMing". The only distinction between the simulationist and non-simulationist approach is that under the simulationist approach a given DC has meaning.

To make up arbitrary numbers, if a slippery slope of DC 15 is coated in ordinary oil, you can't just declare that a DC 42 slippery slope is also coated in ordinary oil. It has to be coated in dragon's blood or astral-glide or whatever. (It's a lubricant created from the waters of the Astral Plane.)

But after giving this paragraph a great deal of thought, I think I understand what you're trying to say: If you have a PC with an oil-phobia who should be making DC 42 checks, you need to be able to railroad them into confronting a dangerous, slippery slope coated in ordinary oil in order to "engage their thematic concerns". Thus it has to be oil and it has to be DC 42. This is similar to your desire to avoid giving them any powers which would allow them to bypass the carefully constructed "frames" (i.e., railroads) which you've designed ("just in time" or otherwise) to confront them.

My understanding is that a prestige class is (i) subject to GM approval, and (ii) tends to require the PC to achieve the requisite backstory in the course of play (the non-mechanical prerequisites for many prestige classes).

Not generally true. So we can take this one off the table.

Can you explain exactly how the mechanics of 4th Edition explicitly support "scene framing" vs. "scene extrapolation"? Could you point to demonstrations of this technique being employed in the adventures written by the designers of 4th Edition?

Skill challenges for overland travel are one obvious example.

Apparently the word "explain" escaped your notice there. Try again.

The healing mechanics are another. Both short rests and extended rests - which separate healing from any ingame activity or use of resources - open up much greater flexibility for scene framing,

Here you've lost me entirely. How is an enforced 6 hour gap between scenes that can only be taken once every 18 hours giving you "much greater flexibility for scene framing"?

These two techniques can in fact be combined so that - for example - the consequence of a failure in an overland travel challenge is inability to get an extended rest.

Can you explain how this significantly differs from disrupting rests in 3rd Edition within the specific context of framing scenes?

3E, with its wands of CLW, might make the contrast less stark, but I don't know that wands of CLW contribute very much to a feeling of heroic protagonism).

Can you explain how short rests and extended rests contribute to the feeling of "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

As is pretty well known, 4e combat (...) has a distinctive pace: the monsters start out very strongly, putting the PCs on the ropes, but at a certain point into the combat the tide turns, as the PCs' resilience - manifested paradigmatically but not exclusively by their healing-surge based abilities including second wind - kicks in.

Can you explain what any of that has to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

It allows, for example, a player to play a ranger, whose knowledge of the wilderness contributes importantly to the party's survival, without the actual play experience at the table bogging down into tedious minutiae about setting up campsites.

Wait... what? What does the "distinctive pace" of 4E combat have to do with the ranger contributing to overland encounters?

Can you explain what any of that has to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material"?

In the combat case, it allows players to build and play PCs whose protagonism is expressed via their choices in combat - this is always likely to be fairly central to a D&D game, given what D&D is about - without getting bogged down in (i) high search-and-handling time minutiae, and (ii) excessive grittiness.

Oh dear. You seem to have missed the word "explain" again.

As for the suggestion that this sort of game either (i) disavows coherent links between scenes, or (ii) is all about railroading, I'll post another quote (this time from Ron Edwards):

When I'm talking specifically and explicitly about the hyperbole of the Paul Czege quotes you linked to and you have to respond with unrelated comments from someone else to claim that Czege didn't write what he wrote, I don't really have much time to waste with that kind of intellectual dodge.

And all of this despite the fact that I explicitly said that I'm willing to accept that this is just hyperbole on Czege's part.

Look, if you want to insult my GMing and tell me that I run a crappy game using a crappy ruleset, just come out and say it.

Hmmm... I had assumed, based on your praising quotations of Czege, that you were similarly shameless in your railroading, but apparently you feel great shame about it. Sorry about that.

 

[Lalato]

Oh dear. You seem to be confused.

Allow me to explain the analogy for you:

"Tent" = "Current Edition of the Game Supported by WotC"

Now, re-read your message and see if it makes any sense at all.

As always happens in these threads, the goalpost keep getting moved and definitions keep changing to the point where no one can keep up with the silly "debate".

Once people understand that there really is nothing to debate to begin with... this thread will die as it should. Oh well... here's to hoping the end is sooner, rather than later.