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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8290077" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I fixed it.  Sorry about that.I'm pulling these two out because I think they cut right into the meat of our differences.  I'm going to start with the bottom first.1)  Yes, you could add Wandering Monsters to 3e, 4e, and 5e.  However, you aren't even close to systemitizing them in an integrated way at this point.  You'll get nothing like the experience of Moldvay Basic's Wandering Monsters on play merely by "adding them."  I've discussed this ad nauseum with respect to 5e.  You have to have an Exploration Turn + Rest Turn + Light Clock scheme (i) matter to play such that the decision-tree navigated for all of the constituent parts have teeth both in the moment and downstream on the delve as a whole (each part has to be QCed for its role...if Equipment Loadout/Encumbrance is irrelevant and/or Light is trivial to attain/maintain and/or Gold/XP isn't a thing and/or trivial combats are easily resolved without attrition) at all, (ii) have sufficient stakes (that are measured and weighted at a system level), (iii) all of the units/moves involved (1st order durations, 2nd order considerations such as do I take this spell/move vs that one and what are the impacts) have to be QCed, and (iv) the whole exploration conflict system can't trivially be obviated (overwhelmingly via apex power in the way of Spells).TLDR - "Adding Wandering Monsters" to 3.x, 4e, 5e is probably 5 % of the design work.  You still have the entire integration process (which involves QCing the rest of the system for failure points...of which there are MANY in those 3 systems for the actual system purpose and experience of the Wandering Monster Clock).  It would be like removing or changing the Light or Condition Clocks from Torchbearer.  The 1st and 2nd order effects on the play paradigm are enormous.2)* And D&D Initiative governs who goes 1st.* And D&D spells have Range, Duration, etc etc.* And Blades in the Dark has a strict Stress Pool that must be managed and has rules for replenishing it and what happens if you burn through it on a Score.* And Dogs in the Vineyard has rules for escalating conflicts and adding to your dice pool and adding Traits/Relationships/Things to Conflicts and determining Fallout.I mean this is endless when it comes to TTRPGs.  I could literally spend probably several hours just rattling "very specific, physical (insofar as they tightly encode and govern play interactions/collisions) tools" for TTRPG games that I've run in my life.To use your "cuisine blending" example:  I would say its trivially true that "TTRPG blending" is significantly more fraught enterprise than "cuisine blending" (I'm not a particularly accomplished cook, but I can identify coherent textures/flavor profiles and have them relatively accommodate each other in a dish or as a meal...meanwhile I'm extraordinarily accomplished as a TTRPG GM and hacker and I come up with off-the-cuff design instantiations in game that I'm intimately familiar with that I find relatively unpalatable).  Simultaneously, I would say that "sport blending" and "mixed martial arts" have had enormous success (and a lot of games are actually born directly from the crucible of "sport blending").Finally, sport has an enormous number of "squishy" subjectivity refereeing involved in it; the Block/Charge call in Basketball, the Catch, Personal Fouls, Defensive Holding, Offensive Holding, Defensive Pass Interference, Offensive Pass Interference (to name a few) rules in American Football, and combat sports_are_utterly_littered with them (before you even go to judging/scorecards!).[HR][/HR]I've read and interacted with plenty of your posts in the past and you've never struck me as the "system doesn't matter" sort of poster.  But what I'm reading from your last few posts feels very much like that.Am I reading you correctly or are you saying something like "TTRPG system design/structure (including everything that it encodes, promotes, constrains) is significantly less concrete and significantly less impactful than the same design/structure is for something like Sport which doesn't strictly have a governing shared imagined space?"I certainly don't agree with "system doesn't matter" but I don't even agree with the more nuanced, less strident second version.Can you comment on that?</blockquote>

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