Recent content by Micah Sweet

Seems a little nitpicky to me. Is the 100% sim straw man going back into battle once more?

Always and never are absolutes, used in rhetoric for emphasis. They probably shouldn't be, but the more precise you make your language, the harder it is to make a clear point. I have a series of preferences I believe in, that work best for me. I rarely get to follow those preferences exactly in...

I never said it was bigger, but at this point WotC's game simply does not matter to me anymore.

The problem with that definition (in addition to the moral judgment leveled on your rhetorical opponents) is that it suggests that no business should ever fail for any reason, because business failure nearly always leads to some good, hardworking people losing their jobs.

There is a lot more D&D (and its relatives) out there than the thin point of the spear officially supported by WotC in 2025.

That's fair. My actual preference is for the player to stick to their PC specifically once the campaign begins, but in practice people throw out little details about their backstories all the time and it's not something I'm losing sleep over. My daughter's PC in a recent game brought the party...

Of course, different games serve different purposes, even the same game at different tables.

Getting an enemy to surrender or run away should IMO count as defeating them for purposes of xp.

Absolutely. Morale is a thing (or should be), and IMO enhances the verisimilitude of the experience.

And even that assumes what's happening at WotC even matters to you. How many people on this thread even play 5.5? I'm sure it's not everyone.

Personally I've always carved out an exception for superhero settings in regards to that stuff. Whole different kind of play for me.

Yup. For me, session zero is when everyone at the table contributes to the setting, whether directly related to their PC or possibly otherwise. After that, the players are inhabiting their PCs and the GM is inhabiting everything else.

The title of the last episode is literally, "The Past is the Past".

Agreed. Whole different paradigm.

There's a big difference for me.I don't see RPGs as collaborative storytelling. It's (to me) a way to explore an imaginary world through an imaginary character, to act as they would and react as they would react, hopefully to predominantly interesting situations.