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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7520136" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I don’t disagree. I’m just saying that a lot of players will favor options with hard-coded mechanics because there’s no uncertainty on what they do.You may think you encountered a lot of D&D players, but that’s still anecdotal. And at any rate, if we proceed under the assumption that they were in the minority, it’s still not a new problem in 5e.Sure, if that’s how you prefer to phrase it.I strongly disagree. I’ve run plenty of games that many would describe as “railroads” that all of my players thoroughly enjoyed. My players probably wouldn’t describe them as railroads, but that’s because they wanted to go where it was going. The reason railroads is a problem is because they remove player agency, but if the players don’t encounter a situation where they want to go a new direction that the railroad doesn’t allow, then their agency is never infringed upon. And a skilled DM can switch tracks (or create brand new routes) at a moment’s notice if their players do want to go in a different direction.Said as if you can’t do exactly that in a more preplanned adventure.I did say purely reactive. Being able to react to players interests and input is an important skill for any DM, I just wouldn’t enjoy a game that was purely reactive.Unless you’re seriously saying that a half to two thirds of your game is taken up by resolving downtime activities, I think you may have misunderstood what I meant by “fun part of the game.” Uptime is simply time when you’re playing things out moment-to-moment. If that really only takes up a third to half of your table time, then yeah, I would get bored and quit pretty fast.I actually did play in a game that was like that once. It was bizarre. One dude was just like doing a bunch of spreadsheets to figure out how much money he could make investing in cattle farming, and telling the GM how many cows he wanted to buy while I, with my monk-like character (this wasn’t D&D, but it had a similar martial artist class) was just like... “I don’t know, I guess I train in my dojo?” The whole session. Not only did we never pursue the obvious plot bait because the one guy didn’t want to take time away from his imaginary business, not only did I never get to throw a punch, I never got to roleplay my character because there were almost no moment to moment interactions. Everything was “what do you do over this four weeks while the other guy is raising his cows?” Never went back to that group (although there were other reasons for that).And that’s totally reasonable. But if you acknowledge that this is enough of a problem to some people that they would have more fun playing a different game, then how is it so hard to accept that “money is not useful” is a legitimate critique, at least for people with certain playstyle preferences, even if it isn’t a problem for you and your players?It’s a pretty well-known psychological phenomenon that too much creative freedom actually stifles creativity. When your options are “absolutely anything,” people become overwhelmed and can’t filter the unlimited options down enough to make a decision. Restrictions and guidelines actually foster creativity. Obviously there’s a limit to how far that can go before those limitations start getting in the way of the creativity they are meant to spark, which is why I did not suggest trying to codify every possible benefit of every single thing one might buy. But some simple advice, like “a character with a wealthy lifestyle may be able to persuade certain NPCs without a roll, or be able to attempt social actions that a character with a poor lifestyle might automatically fail” would go a long way. I still think a simple table of mishaps and windfalls that you roll on once a month with a modifier based on your lifestyle during that month would be a huge step towards making downtime more interesting (to me, if it needed to be said).</blockquote>

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