Excellent evaluation as always really cutting to the heart of the matter.
In particular I appreciate how you describe the interaction between the game and the play itself and cut through the more superficial evaluations by asking the question "what is the effect on someone's experience".
What happens next? You don’t need a random event generator. You need to know how this world works, its physics, its politics, its people, its logic, well enough that the next thing follows naturally.
Actually while I respect this concept I rather like the twists and wildcard rules in various games because they add something unexpected which in a game is really important for me to feel engaged when the game is supposed to not be deterministic. I really like to be suprised. In good measure mind but still.
They are not the enemy of originality. They are its infrastructure.
Agreed. They're often neither but they're necessary. Every setting has the right to change things and oftentimes should but none very change everything and communicate that to a player so there necessary just a gravity is a necessary trope.
If we are going to treat traps as fair, interactive puzzles
Interestingly the whole point of a trap is that it's not easy to detect until it's too late. So that's important to replicate. Still we're not talking 21 Centuary Tech so it won't be perfect.
If your rogue has a +9 to Perception, you, the player, don’t actually have to be perceptive. You can be half-asleep, eating a slice of pizza, roll a natural 20, and find the hidden dart trap.In OSR-style play, we throw that dynamic out the window. We want you, the living, breathing human being sitting at the table, to solve the problem. When you encounter a hazard, your character sheet isn’t going to save you—your brain is.Instead of saying, “I roll a Perception check to search the room,” an OSR player is encouraged to describe their specific, physical actions in the fiction. They might say, “I pour water from my waterskin onto the floor to see if it pools naturally or drains into any hidden seams between the tiles.” Or, “I hold my torch close to the doorframe to see if the draft flickers in a way that suggests a hollow space behind the wood.”
I think there's room for comprimise here. I rogue would know traps. Maybe the roll couldt ell them what kidn of thing was possible in this dungeon. They would then have to use their nouse. Otherwise the player knowledge of theworld would have to be very great to know what to look for.
Why It Ruins Lethal Games
'games' beibg the operative word.
The game becomes a battle of wits rather than a lottery of dice rolls.
Interestingly this kind of still allows for a battle of wits but in a fair way.
What I want to examine is how the way your character is framed through their abilities shapes the decisions you make, and ultimately, the experience you have at the table.
This is a very interesting point. However I don't currently have abilities like this. Still the creatures might and so might the tools so that will inform how tge player interacts with the game and enable me to be less combat-focused.
Here’s the trap I see solo designers stumble into: without real opposition or stakes, the world can feel too responsive. Everything bends to the player’s will, NPCs only exist when asked about, problems resolve too neatly, consequences don’t matter. This is the flat world problem; it’s not that nothing happens, it’s that everything happens on the player’s terms. The world isn’t a place but a vending machine.The fix is to give the world its own agency: NPCs pursue goals independently, situations escalate whether the player acts or not, danger has inherent signals. If you walk into a trap, it’s not random cruelty but a consequence of ignoring obvious warnings. You chose to ignore them.This means being generous with information and showing danger, letting the world teach the player how it works through early encounters and visible consequences. A trap that springs without warning is unfair, but a trap that’s clearly a trap and the player walks into it anyway is a choice.NPCs need motivations that don’t depend on the player noticing them. The villain is scheming whether or not your character is paying attention. The town guard has routines and goals. The mysterious noble is pursuing her own agenda. These things should be discoverable but not dependent on player intervention.
Very good points here. Reminds me of similar points from Kate's OSR blog. The one about NPCs being independent. The difficulty I would say s the cognitive load of it all. I think most people want an interesting and engaging NPC but keeping up with that can be quite draining and is a skill I dont think everyone necessarily has. They might be able to do it but it's not easy for them.
V1 of Archivium has a big issue with this, there is a MASSIVE mystery in the Archive… that you don’t know exist until you are many many shifts into the game, and which most players might never even uncover. Bad design! No biscuit!
I would say a fourth layer that you don't know exists until deeper in the game isn't bad in and of itself so long as you're kept busy in the meantime.
world escalates with you as new threats match your rising power.
This is what I'm talking about in the above comment. Except, of course, this is in reverse. It highlights how the so called negative effects can be thematically appropriate.
When something is taken away, it should change the shape of play rather than simply shrink it.
I think a little bit of shrinking of scope is appropriate. But I suppose you could say that if you do it right, it's only really shrinking in the sense that. You are effecting the theme of the game effectively.
the poor human fighter is usually the only one holding a torch
Really it should be an amazing exception, not the rule.
My point is that the property of associated/dissociated is completely unrelated to the property of realistic/unrealistic.
Iwould argue that the issue here is that the term 'realism' is more like 'internal consistwncy' or 'verisimilitude'. When we have an event that happens and breaks verisimilitude it breaks us out of the game. Whereas accepting the initial premise of warp drive means that a ship warping into space next tk you isn't braking the expectation. Whereas dissassociated mechanics are breaking those expectations because there's no reason why the character ahould only make a one handed catch per game.
*Caravan means that Marla will gets +1E and that she can travel 1 HEX for free with them. They also sell/buy as in towns.
I like the idea of discovering something random that gives you a boon.
On the other hand I also like the idea of a caravan saving you energy but making an encounter more likely. I suppose the most logical would be that the scale shifts and your're unlikely to ckme accross a smaller encounter bht quite likely to come accross a larger oneI wouldn't want to up the likelihood too much more the result if you do get an encounter.
This is an excellent method for any kind of challenge. Not just a boss fight.
Solution 2 : Sicko's Lagoon
This solution seems to revolve around the following
What's important to recognize is that Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't technically ban or even replace the diegetic conversation. In theory the two procedures can co-exist, but in practice—with player priorities, optimal play, and finite time—A/D takes precedence.
One solution might be to. Have NPCs use the mechanics in ways that teach the player how effective they are. Similar to the way that Pokemon uses mechanics to teach people how to play the Pokemon game and helps them to avoid the trap of simply getting large damage moves and using only them.
Resource dice are an excellent idea.
Very good enounter tables to use.
Niv Lova does include an encounter range table. The encounter might be very close, giving you little opportunity to hide. You might also see them from afar, giving you ample time to position yourself for an ambush or avoid the encounter entirely.
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It is not a stable state because the “perfect” balancing point is dynamic – even a 4,000 year old game like Go still has had balance adjustments in the past twenty years.
It's actually acceptable to tweak as the game matures and people find new ways to play it. Don't think you have to get it perfect first time.
Opening Stuck Doors. 2-in-6 -> STR check with disadvantage.
While I agree that rolling for things you want them to succeed at can unecessarily stunt the narrative, when combined with the idea in this article of rolling to see how well or poorly you do it could be used to give you narrative fodder. Like this example of the door. You don'tneed to roll but rolling might give you a nice connecting moment so you'renot skipping through the adventure to the 'good' stuff not having any fibre in amongst the sugar.
When players are attempting something that you have already determined will succeed, it can happen that circumstances suggest there could be a cost to it. For example, climbing a very difficult surface. The cost could be lost time (always a precious resource when you track time with the random encounter die), broken tools, exhaustion, injury, etc. Or the inverse - even faster than expected, went up real quiet, etc.
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"Can I use Stealth to climb down the well?" "No," I said, "No, you may not. You can use a rope to climb down the well."
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The DM gives another +2 for the handsome tip and decides 18 is good enough to make a good impression.
You could also make the roll a part of the solution. i.e. if they'retryong to do something hard it might tilt the balance ratger than it being the focus.
Actually a Persuasion roll
One weakness is trying to fit everything into specific boxes. I woukd argue this isn't persuasion.
Doing something for loved ones can allay our anxiety about them
I suppose this is what I discovered. What I wasn't doing was the thing I should have been doing. Even though that thing was only touching base and not actually doing anything major it was still what I should have been doing.
See this note front he beginning of the article. and this one