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I’m sure there are some people that would accept methods other than those caused by magic in the setting. But I think it’s a very common objection that the “because magic” bypasses because the player can maintain their character concept. As I mentioned, Spire has Fallout that can change...

So I think this is the main issue with discussion about this. To me, there’s no discernible difference between hit points and expertise dice. This is yet another reason why I chose to stop worrying about anything “meta” a while back. Very often, what people are calling “meta game” (as in...

Sure, but my original comment wasn’t about you in particular. For some people, “because magic” is a perfectly acceptable answer. Probably even for the characters. “Yes, I did those things… but it was because of magic, so it’s not a big deal”. For some, a spell is just one example of a game...

I think magic typically gets a pass in these situations because it’s not the game telling a player how a character feels so much as how they’ve been compelled to feel. “Because magic…” is an answer that for some reason makes it okay. I expect because it doesn’t perturb the player’s conception...

Crimson Longinus has described his desire as such. What about in less than ideal situations? If the ideal is that you don’t have to pick, what about when you do? How do you decide between two plausible options? I’m not super familiar with specifics of Critical Role. But I do know that was...

And how do you pick among multiple plausible outcomes?

Not 100% agency. You’re rephrasing what I said. Absolute control of their character’s mental state and decisions. To never have to suffer any unwanted negative consequences of that sort.

I’m not using it as a term of art… just as a descriptor of some RPG play. And as I said, there’s a little of that in most games. But I think there’s even more when the player maintains the total control being described.

No, nothing implausible. But why would a character choose the unwanted in a truly inopportune time in their world? And why would you, as the player controlling that character and supposedly making decisions based only on the character’s goals and desires, choose the unwanted when it might...

No, this is just your inability to approach play in any way other than with absolute authority of your PC’s mental state and decisions. You’re taking your preference and acting as though it should be the default approach.

Character realization versus character discovery, maybe? I can’t help but see the desire to have total control over the character’s mental state and decisions at all times as a form of power fantasy. And while there’s almost always a little bit of that in lots of RPGs, it’s not the part that...

For sure. That it’s incentivized by the rules in how characters advance is no coincidence!

Sure, linger games can be perfectly fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. But shorter campaigns are good, too. Neither is objectively better… but longer games tend to be put forth by many sources as being better.

I think that there’s an ingrained idea that longer is better. So that’s kind of the ideal that people shoot for, and then things fizzle out due to any number of the reasons people have offered. Longer is not better. It’s just longer.

Yeah, agency needs to he looked at based on the specific game in question. Sure, a game like Spire may have more consequences that take away agency than D&D… but it grants agency in other ways that D&D does not. Examining and judging a single rule or instance of play in Spire by the same...

It all comes down to three things: player input, GM input, and rules input. These three things interact in different ways in play, and that’s what creates the results. The amount of each or how they are implemented will vary by game, and what’s preferred will vary by person or group. But...

I’d say to maybe check out The Between. There aren’t any rules that would compel you to act contrary to what you think your character would do… not unless you introduce it as a potential consequence yourself. But it does require that you not have a fully fleshed out sense of who your character...

Thanks for making a great game! I will post more from our game soon!

Yes… this is very clear! But do you think that everyone is equally as perturbed by this as you are? I can’t comment in Exalted 2… but sure, some games may try for this kind of thing and fail. And yes, others will be better. As to why you might consider such systems… maybe because they...

That’s why I’ve tried to use actual examples from play. The Knight and Squire situation from Spire, my character Clara from The Between, and then an example similar to one offered by @zakael19 from Stonetop. None of those examples have been a case of a single dice roll dictating how a character...