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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9869552" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I don’t believe that’s exactly correct… though it is possible I’ve missed some posts. Mostly, I think people advocating for any kind of rules that dictate character behavior in some way are talking about something more nuanced than reversing D&D’s PC to NPC dynamic RE social skills. I think that all depends on how a given game handles it. Well, the slippery slope element is absolutely a strawman. No games descend into that. You’re citing games that involve changes to the character in some way. But none of them do what you’re fearing. You should criticize those games based on what they do, not your imagined inevitable descent into nothing but dice rolls to determine everything. For example, in Tales From The Loop, PCs cannot die. It’s just not a consequence of play. An individual person can like that or not, depending on preferences. But however one feels about it, They should limit that view to how they feel about Tales From The Loop, not other RPGs. If I said that because Tales From The Loop lacks the ultimate consequence, it’s only a matter of time until there are no consequences at all, I’d be pretty far off. Likewise if I criticize D&D for allowing the complete loss of agency via character death because that’s not a necessity for RPGs to function, I’d be pretty far off again.Every game will have constraints on player agency. Hopefully, what those are is understood and appreciated by the participants before play begins. Like, if I play D&D, I should know and appreciate that my PC might get killed by a monster or a trap. If I play Vampire, I may lose control of my bloodlust. And so on. Describing these things as loss of agency ignores that they are intentional parts of play. No one is overstepping the game and “taking” agency away. These are simply the stakes of play. It’s no different with rules related to character personality or beliefs and so on.</blockquote>

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