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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Meech17" data-source="post: 9337458" data-attributes="member: 7044459">When I was a young teen, I got very into roleplaying. Just free-form RP. This was mostly done in Yahoo! Messenger Chatrooms, and then eventually moving onto web forums. Around the same time my older brother began dating a girl who was also very into role playing. The three of us used to sit around and literally just talk. Describe what our characters were doing, talk to one another in character. It was fun. Essentially just collaborative story writing. The problem this, and the forums, and the chat rooms ran into though, was always conflict resolution. Typically you're not content to come up with a character who lives a normal routine life with no challenges to overcome. One of the RP forums I was on really bugged me because player vs player fighting was a huge piece of the theme. When two people are just able to say "Well, you did that, but it doesn't matter because I'm able to do this." it ends up being this endless thread of one-upping. It got very tiring to me. Playing the story telling game with my brother also had these issues. We were a bit better about it, because we enjoyed trying to come up with a compelling story.. So we were happy to narrate our characters taking a beating or falling short, because we knew that the comeback would be better for it. With that said we ended up stealing dice from the Risk set and coming up with our own rules for dice contests. I certainly think there needs to be some sort of 'game' element. Some sort of situation where control is removed from the player. The ability to try is always there, but never the guarantee of success. It's funny that myself, my brother, and his girlfriend (Who he would go on to marry, and later un-marry) would transition to D&D, specifically 3.5e. We LOVED the crunch. We absolutely geeked out over the mile long list of skills. Over all the feats. Sub classes, prestige classes.. We got very invested in the game portion of our role playing game. 15ish years later however, and I'm running a 5e game and I'm very nostalgic over that game.. But I'm not quick to return to it. I am actually actually looking to strip that crunch away from my game. I'm trying to convince my players to look for answers that may not be on their character sheets. When I'm calling for a skill roll I find that I'm usually giving my players options. "Go ahead and roll athletics, or acrobatics, whichever you're better at". Sure, I know that they are different skills, and have different use cases. Jumping a gap would probably be athletics right? Either way, I don't think it matters too much. Your character is physically well suited to this task. Maybe that's because you're playing a dexterous and nimble character who will leap the gap with perfect form and grace. Or maybe it's because you're strong as an ox, and never missed leg day, so your character can thrust themselves over the gap like they're heaving a sack of grain into a wagon. I feel like I'm typing a lot without actually saying anything, so I'll finish with my answer. I think there is too much game when you ask the player what they want to do, and instead of saying "I want to do X" and then you come up with how to resolve the task, they instead pause, and look down at the sheet and say "Well.. I don't know. I don't think I have anything that helps me here." So I guess "Too much game" is going to depend on the group and the players. I'd assume that for even the most crunchiest and math intensive games out there, there are groups where it'd be perfect, and they wouldn't be bogged down by it, even while others might be.</blockquote>

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