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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5477520" data-attributes="member: 957">In other words, all roads do not lead to Rome.Can't say much based on this little bit, but that certainly sound like an improvement.I think the problem may be that your calibration is off.  My name is Bryon.  <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=":)" />(just kidding, no actual offense taken or intended and no complaint)The ideal of the perfect game would be like being inside a book or movie as it happens and the next paragraph has not been written yet.This "perfect" game would have no mechanics at all and yet would remain consistent and reliable and mutually understood by everyone at the table.  I am an environmental engineer.  I specifically do a large portion of my work directing groundwater remediation projects.  Groundwater models are a common element of these projects.  The ideal perfect model would be able to tell you that if a benzene molecule starts "here" it will travel to "there" in X time and then it will degrade, get sucked out of well, enter a river, whatever.  The subsurface is vastly complex and there is never enough data.  The model provides a mathematical simulation of the subsurface and behavior of the benzene.  The mathematical simulation includes estimates and approximations.  It includes a lot of them.  But the goal of a good model is to always shave those away and go back and shave them some more.  The perfect model would be no model, it would just be knowledge of the behavior of the benzene.  Any change to the model that increases the influence of the model's approximations is considered a bad thing.  The results of the model will be somewhere between a total default rule of thumb approximation and and actual description of what happens.  All changes must push toward the latter.  In the mean time, the benzene has no idea that anyone is running a model.  It just does what it does.  Anything in the model that doesn't reflect that is error in the model and reality won't change to come to it.  It is just error.Game systems are mathematical models.  They give both all the players an even understanding of how a reliable representation of a story should happen and they give all the systems within the game model a reliable system for interaction.  When you say that a fireball deals 7d6 damage, you have introduced a mathematical approximation and there is error in that.  When you read a fantasy novel, even a D&D-specific novel, the quantified damage or dice of damage of a fireball is nowhere to be seen.  Any changes should work to make the players less aware of the 7d6 and more aware of just the story.If three jumps and then no more jumps is the rule, the story is out the window and we are all about the approximation side of the model.If you disguise that by saying that ten jumps happened, but three jump checks "represented" those ten jumps, you have sacrificed granularity, you have error in your system.A perfect model is a model that no one knows exists.  It is just the story - the narrative.  3E does not achieve that.  But 4E moves explicitly in the direction of being in your face and saying "Hey, remember the model, this model itself is part of the fun. It protects you from the boredom of a fourth jump.  It protects you from too much prep time, It makes certain that the math always works."  None of these are goals that you would consider if you sat down to write a story.  And, for me, they should not have any more attention than is absolutely required when making a game that is intended to be dominated by the story over all else.Are we moving toward the being inside a totally game-less story end of the spectrum, or are we moving toward the rule of thumb mechanical approximations with narrative connections end?</blockquote>

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