Recent content by Pedantic

This is... Strange. Like, the reason systems are interesting is to present challenges that can be honestly engaged with. If you're not going to do that, you're not playing a game at all, and the whole point of the activity is different. Plus, why would you want the "gamers" there if you're not...

I don't know why you'd want to play a game about it at that point, better just to do collaborative storytelling outright. Plus the rules are kind of the point; it should be fun to use them and know about them. If it's not, then they should be different. I like rules; if there aren't really any...

Not the bit I care about, really. I draw a pretty hard line between "gathering more information about the board state" by asking the GM questions about the world and situation and then deploying rules to resolve it the way you'd like. I like RPGs because they're such a great a source of new and...

My complaints are many. :p The biggest problem though is that play often isn't about using the rules to get a desired outcome, or problem solving the current board state, so much as negotiating with me about what should be possible. That can all too easily veer even further into negotiating...

I've been almost exclusively a GM on and off for the last 15 years. My current group has been playing for 3. I play a lot of games that are competitive, but I'm not especially highly ranked at any of them. I design and playtest board games regularly as well. I don't think I'd describe myself...

Yeah, I put the blame on the traditional insistence on loosely held rules. It's quite difficult to trust the same entity with playing the opposition and handling resolution fairly. It's easier in a world without rule zero and clear resolution systems to not worry about it. Failing that, you...

I really don't think that's a behavior fundamentally related to playful competition. I met up with the same 3 friends to play 18xx games weekly, which are long economic strategy games without any random elements. We're all competing, but it's not especially relevant who wins, so much as how it...

I've never found discussions of "fun" particularly useful or relevant. It's clearly something people can get from games, but isn't exclusive to games, and if you can do it wholly outside the structure of a game, then its either irrelevant or actually harmful as a design consideration...

I generally think that role-playing is specifically the domain of goal-setting, and that it's symbiotic with the "game" stuff to make the complete TTRPG. You could source goals from something else in an unbounded system, like an open ended city building game, for example, but that wouldn't be...

I think there's some confusion here about what "winning" is for exactly. You're focusing a lot on the competitive angle, which I agree doesn't really apply to TTRPGs outside of some really unusual table setups, but that's not the only purpose that setting a goal and checking if you've achieved...

Yeah, loss conditions tend to be things like "the demon is summoned," "the capital falls," "our political rival is elected," and the ever present "death." Generally, players have goals that stand in opposition to those things and become impossible thereafter, but the nature of the game lets...

I actually think roguelikes are a better comparison here than you credit, it's just the player avatar is the party, not any individual character. The real defining feature of the roguelike isn't loss of resources, it's run based gameplay, where you acquire stuff to solve newly generated problems...

I personally have found that open ended nature to be the most useful way to explain the design/structural challenges of the RPG vs. other kinds of games. Players get to set their own victory conditions (or at least pick between several) and play continues after the evaluation of victory...

Oh that's fascinating! I have a friend working in that exact field. I get updates on absolutely random books.

I think there is something here, depending what the metacurrency in question does. Especially when it's a system layered on top of a heavier game, the function of metacurrency is often to let the player alter the gameplay loop. You could deal with the difficult to climb walls, or you could spend...