Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7342826" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that that is part of it.  But I think that the other part of it is that almost no game system has invested more in creating examples of play as D&D.  One of my observations about RPGs that I think is most important is that the rules of the game have no more influence (and maybe less) on how the game plays than how the players of the game think about the game and how the GM prepares to play it.   D&D's 'modules' which have always been its most salient aspect in my opinion, set a standard for how to prepare for a game and how you should be approaching the game in a way that I don't think any other system has ever equaled.  In a sense yes.  The big problem is that the sort of play it typically provides examples for eventually is deprecated in practice UNLESS the players continue to think about the game in the same way and don't try to subvert the example play.   The game gives the DM very little advice on what to do then, though a great many DMs over the years have invented some sort of playstyle to accommodate higher level play.For example, my play style is to avoid it by slowing advancement down.  <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'm going on seven years into a campaign, maybe 150 4 hour gaming sessions, and the party just hit 10th level.   No, I've absolutely been in that campaign back in college.  You totally can do it.  It just requires that you change the way you prepare to play and the way you think about the game.  And one GMs excessive plot protection is another GMs assurance of character continuity throughout the narrative.One thing I will say is that this style of intrigue based play works better with smaller parties.  The campaign frequently involved deciding which plot thread to advance based on who was there, with the result that there were a lot of one on one sessions or other small groups, as well as big events involving multiple PC's working together.   If you examine the narrative of "Game of Thrones" you'll find it works the same way.  Characters are usually off on their own scheming and dealing with their own particular problems.  It doesn't really have the sort of large ensemble cast encouraged by having a party of 4 or 6 protagonists working jointly.So you say, but how much threat a D&D PC is under is something that can be totally dialed however you like it.  You just change the way you prepare to play.  What I think I'm hearing from you is more, "The rules of Savage Worlds caused me to think very differently about how I prepare for and play the game.", rather than "The rules of Savage Worlds support a game that D&D doesn't."  Two entirely different levers.  You have have pervasive magic without Vancian (Avatar the Last Airbender, Mistborn, Wheel of Time) and Vancian without pervasive magic.Again, you aren't actually talking about Vancian.  You are talking about how you think about the game and how you prepare to play it.   I've never actually done a planehopping campaign in 30 years of gaming.   Not that I don't want to, it's just I've never yet had a game go so long that I've exhausted the material plane as a story resource, nor have I ever deliberately started a game with planehopping in mind (the may my brainstorming for the Qaybar project explicitly did).Whereas, I watched the same broadcasts and it played like I feared it would.Ahh... Yes. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   Exactly.   How you think about playing is as important or more important than the rules.   Two groups with the same rules system aren't necessarily playing the same game, even if they play by the RAW.Yep.There is more to it than that.   Task resolution in FATE is explicitly open ended.   You can succeed on a roll and the GM can literally improvise this as you being cast into Hell because he thinks it is cool.I would only trust people to make this assessment if they really deeply understood games.  Many people don't understand what they read or how to assess how it will play from how it reads.   When I say "Mouseguard reads better than [I think it will] play", I don't mean just that I think the rules are working cross purpose to the authors intention - although in some cases I do, because I don't think the author and I agree over what it means to enjoy a story nor do I think the author has analyzed what it means to enjoy a story well.   I mean also that it's a powerfully and well written book, describing a game that won't succeed as well as the high conception that inspired it.   I bought the game hoping for a rules light bridge for my daughters, but I got a game that wasn't really good at anything.  Too finicky to be rules light, but at the same not offering any real crunch as a game (lots of illusion of mechanical depth, without actual depth).</blockquote>

Verification