Recent content by Neonchameleon

So are all the other games I listed. But no two groups (no two players) are quite the same.

"What about the other players?" is not really an issue; the other players are no less engaged if they are trying to take on Nosferatu the Vampire because they killed [PC's] mother than because they enthralled the realm's princess. And any sensible GM will share the spotlight even if not in a...

100% I would also say that you are also condensing two axes - collaborative scene building and pre-plotted arcs. For example someone running Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords (either edition) has vastly more of the story pre-plotted than any game of Fate I have ever seen and I would argue that...

IME it's a feature ... for groups who don't know each other before they start. Giving a little bit to everyone means that everyone who gets something. Like meeting at MacDonalds. But almost every group would be better off with something else once they've found what they all enjoy. I've yet to...

Yeah, "the sauce that makes D&D work" is being just a little bad but not actively terrible at everything. For example ToTM 5e drives me mad because I want to know exactly how big that 20' radius is or what I can line up with the lightning bolt - and 3.X is more dependent on ToTM because of...

First I'll say that 5e can do 90% 2e or 3.X can do for 30% of the effort. And (especially 2024) it's much better balanced with vastly superior rogues, monks, paladins, barbarians, and sorcerers (and warlock is the best class). Doesn't make me love it but it is a big improvement partly due to how...

I am saying that Poisoned does indeed cover a vast array of psychochemical states, far more different than burned to cut. One state won't cover PCP to a bad acid trip. And poison someone with warfarin and they don't get discombobulated so much as haemophiliac Poisoned as a condition is binary...

It could apply to physical and magical damage if we discarded hit points and just had a single hurt condition, possibly? But even then the effects of crack, the effects of curare, the effects of warfarin, and the effects of weed are monumentally different.

Because generalised poison is a ridiculous condition. Hemlock is very different from cyanide is very different from curare is very different from asbestos is very different from alcohol. One "Poisoned" condition blocks up design space although several adversaries might use the same or related...

Nope. The ruleset gives something that will happen. In the case of My Life With Master the story is that the Master (played by the GM) abuses the Minions (played by the players) until one of them snaps and tries to kill the Master. Who will snap? Why? How will they try to kill the Master? Will...

My Life With Master would be a counter-example. It's rare and only a few games do it (Masks springs to mind) but it happens.

I'd say that unified core mechanics is what I'd consider to have been modern in the 1980s - and even D&D has been on this style for half its life; it was one of the major changes made by 3.0 while even in the 90s 2e felt archaic

It depends what your goal is. Virtue, possibly not? Fun, yes. Interesting stories, definitely.

In all honesty you need to find better games. One of the things I look for in a game I'm considering for a campaign is whether there at least appears to be depth and I can see options that are non-trivial. And one of the other things I look for is whether actually engaging what's there would...

You outright stated that you thought that D&D could handle GrimDark better than Daggerheart and listed optional rules that are mostly not fit for purpose for GrimDark. Daggerheart is a good flexible game where the default mode of play is similar to D&D. But out of the box (and Daggerheart is...