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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9556001" data-attributes="member: 42582">To be honest, I'm a bit worn out by this sort of commentary from people who have not played the RPG in question, and so have not experienced the actual phenomenology of play, and who seem to have giant blind-spots for the games they play.In 5e D&D, for instance, all the following things are true:*A player of a PC of midd-ish level (say 3 or higher) can have their PC face down an archer or crossbow-wielder knowing that a single shot cannot kill their PC. The PC cannot have that knowledge. *A player of a PC can know that their PC can move from <here> to <there> without being intercepted, without stumbling, etc, in virtue of their ability to read the squares on the battle-map. The PC cannot have this knowledge (they do not live in a stop-motion world, and they do not know that they never trip over on small bumps in the ground). *A player of a PC can know that their PC will never sneeze while casting a spell, or mispronounce the arcane words, etc. The character can't have this knowledge. *A player of a PC can know that their PC will never falter, panic, be smitten, smile at the simple beauty of a carving above a gate, etc unless they the player choose for this to happen to their PC. (Or unless their PC is ensorcelled.) The PC cannot have this knowledge, anymore than any human being can have knowledge of what their emotions will be and will cause them to do. The result of this is that the player of a PC can make tactical and operational decisions that pay no regard to morale and other emotions at all. The PC cannot make this decision.(I think there are other examples that might be given, too, but these are some of the main ones.)If I posted that, therefore, 5e D&D "seems more like making decisions about mechanics which then produce a story about the character", I would receive pages of replies telling me why I'm wrong, full of special pleading about the abstraction of hit points and stop-motion combat resolution, etc.In the actual play of Torchbearer 2e, as I have experienced, it is 100% about roleplaying the character - making choices about what actions to declare, how to follow through, what the PC wants to risk, etc. The fact that the mechanical parameters unfold in different ways from 5e D&D doesn't change that.Just as in 5e D&D I can't roleplay a character who involuntarily stumbles, or sneezes, or is suddenly swept away by seeing something or someone beautiful. I would have to choose any of these things, which would straight away make them not involuntary. To put it more bluntly, to me it feels as if in 5e D&D I can't actually play a human being.EDITed to fix tags.</blockquote>

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