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1, i.e. 'meh.' I'm a little curious about what will be in the DMG, but that's about it.

This is a good post, but I'm going to quibble about one thing: The GM (MC) has tonnes of authority, and the setup is explicitly very traditional. It's just that they are enjoined not to do railroady BS. Like, some of the hard scene framing in the examples of play would make your average 5e DM blush.

I am once again compelled to sully this thread with my pedantry. Apologies in advance. I think the author of that blog (which I found interesting and insightful!) has a serious misunderstanding of what the 'system' in 'system matters' means. System means the system in use, and includes things...

The purpose of categorisation isn't to validate anyone's preferences. Take it as given that I generally accept your preferences as valid, and want to understand how to support them. When we start taking these terms ('cultures','agendas', whatever) and using them as personal identifiers, things...

I don't see how you got from that essay to any of those assertions. I also don't think it's productive to unearth ancient grudges in any discussion whose aim is enlightenment.

I understand the concept of purist-for-system, I just think it's very much of its time. IMO, there's a reason that style of design fell out of use. That doesn't mean that every unfashionable bit of design is bad -- but I think you can read something like AD&D or Rolemaster and find that there...

[citation needed]

I have it on good authority that the more popular a thing is, the gooder it is also. It's a crime that we even let people who aren't influencers make RPGs, honestly.

The distinction I (and I think @pawsplay , but I don't want to put words in their mouth) have been trying to make is between functional and superfluous detail. The Riddle of Steel is a game about driven people staking it all on vicious sword fights, and it has detailed and bloody rules for...

The problem with RPGs is there are too many of them and I don't have time to play them all. Like @Thomas Shey said, supers games might interest you. I've heard Marvel Universe is good, and not as crunchy as Champions/Hero, but I haven't played it myself. 13th Age is a really good suggestion...

I think might be compatible with neotrad if it means 'player railroading', but not if the arcs are looser and work more like flags -- characters are not static bundles of traits to be expressed if the game is premised on the idea of those traits being challenged. In the latter case (which is...

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree, then. I don't see any point in the article you linked that isn't either good advice for running/designing RPGs as such ('clear agency for PCs' and 'Chekov's gun' in particular), or an incidental technique that doesn't imply any particular agenda...

Isn't this just play as such? If there's no system, even an informal one, just force, I don't think we're even talking about RPGs anymore. Certainly not in a sense in which it matters much which system we are nominally playing. I think some 'indie' or 'story' games actually do just this. Is...

In addition to what @Ruin Explorer and @hawkeyefan said, maybe try a few different games and see what clicks? I know you said they were already a little invested in their characters, but you can always come back to an old game after trying a couple of others.

Yeah, this. As described in this thread, what I'm seeing as the salient features of OC/blorby play are: Strongly character-driven play, with player authoring of both the past and parts of the future. (question for @GobHag : do players work together when making their characters, or is it OK to...

OK, so character-driven play, with some pre-planned events or arcs? How much of what happens is planned? The blog post you linked (about which... the less said, the better) gives the example of Pendragon. IIRC, in Pendragon, the broad events of the campaign are fixed, but all kinds of wild...

If I ever want to really annoy some OSR person (I don't), I'm torn between insisting that Pathfinder is OSR, or that everything after OD&D is not OSR. "Oh, you're into TSR-style D&D? It's a bit too mainstream for me. They really sold out after 1974, it just wasn't the same."

Honestly, the 'Six Cultures' essay is a bad piece that confuses more than it illuminates, and seem to mostly exist to defend certain types of branding or subcultural identification. Regarding OC specifically: every account of it that I read seems to describe a different thing, and some of them...

This thread is a pretty good argument for bringing D&D back to Moorcock-style 'Law and Chaos as cosmic forces' type stuff (which I think has been missing from this discussion). Paladins don't need to believe in particular god, or even Chaos itself: they just need to perform the correct rites...

I've played a fair bit. The combat is good, and I've had fun with the out-of-combat stuff, despite the rules seeming very minimal. The problem lies where the game tries to suture those two parts together. Lancer has its own version of 5e's '6-8' encounters, and it works about as well. My...