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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9798191" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=7635]@Remathilis[/USER], in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/mike-mearls-says-control-spells-are-ruining-5th-edition.715978/post-9791013" target="_blank">their post about the climactic fight against the arch-lich</a>, was talking about the design and the play of the game. I don't think it's any real answer to that post to just assume the status quo for the fiction and the game play.What I mean by that is that the way spells and magic work (both in general, and in the particular case of this NPC), the way turn-taking works in combat, the way that fleeing in fear is resolved, etc, are all matters of game design. They can be done differently from how 3E D&D happens to do them, and that can change the play experience.Different game design can also change the importance of planning. I've done a lot of planning-oriented RPGing (mostly in Rolemaster) It's one way to play a game, But it's not the only way, and these days I wouldn't advocate it as the most interesting way.And when we look at fantasy fiction of fighting arch-liches - and I've got in mind mostly REH Conan stories - they don't really focus on careful planning and prior deployment of spells and other magic. They tend to focus on in-the-moment toughness, insight and heroics. A RPG can be designed so that it produces fiction more like that, and a play experience closer to that also.There's no reason why the rules of a RPG - what you call "the board game" - can't be written so that, in play, they produce an experience that has a certain dramatic/narrative rhythm. There are lots of examples out there. Even without looking beyond D&D, there is the example of 4e D&D, where the framework for encounter building together with the combat resolution rules pretty reliably provides a "heroic rally" narrative - the basic underlying mechanical design that supports this is that monsters/NPCs have more-or-less all of their "oomph" built into their hit points and attacks; whereas PCs have a lot of their oomph built into abilities that they need to "unlock" (eg healing surges; party synergies; etc).My response to this is pretty similar to [USER=7029930]@AnotherGuy[/USER]'s above.And I think the dichotomy that you are putting forward - either follow the game rules, or have the GM "just do it" and make up and narrate fiction, perhaps retroactively constructing some mechanical rationale - is a false one. It's possible to have a RPG where following the rules will produce a dramatically meaningful experience. That RPG will need to have rules differently from (say) the classic D&D rules found in the original booklets, B/X, and Gygax's AD&D: but in the 40 to 50 years since those rules were published, there's been a lot of design work done.</blockquote>

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