We don’t do that here. The GM provides the model of physics the players accept and expect. If the GM just says “nah” when stuff is inconvenient, players don’t know what to expect, and the world becomes inconsistent.
A big part of the GM’s fun in TTRPGs is improving off that. Players always ruin my plans, but that’s part of the game.
Yes, exactly. Consistency is important, because it builds and reinforces trust. The GM just saying “nah” is the other side of the player showing up with a homebrew bullshit build.
I get a lot of pushback from the Pathfinder 2e subreddit for promoting the idea that the system is really great for character-driven, fiction-first tables, because everyone just looks at the number of rules and goes “it’s so obviously a gameist system, why would you ever try to run it as anything else?”, and the answer is it’s a fantastic physics system. The rules provide clarity and consistency where it’s really useful or important, and are easily ignorable where it doesn’t matter.
Yep, the problem with 5e is all the bullshit exceptions to the rules you have to deal with. My biggest most obvious issue every player deals with is bonus actions. They were never playtested and added really late to 5e, and it shows. It’s something like: you can use a bonus action for any action that says it can be used as a bonus action, except you can’t cast a spell with it if you’ve already cast a spell this turn… except for some spells sometimes. The P2e method of everything just costing a set amount of action points, and if you have enough you can always do it, is so much better for players and DMs. It’s just consistent and you know what to expect.
There’s still plenty of room for the DM, but the rules can always be trusted.
You’ve triggered my trap card. I’m going to do the special interest info-dump now. Apologies in advance.
It’s good. It’s written a little weird – it uses inheritance, like computer programming, which can be a little more difficult to wrap you head around than it needs to be if you’re not at least a little familiar with coding, and it’s written as if it’s doing everything possible to shut down rules lawyers, so whatever doesn’t read like API documentation reads a bit like legalese – but the actual system is nice.
It’s highly balanced, which is an awful word that its fanbase doesn’t seem to understand, but it means that it totally shuts down winning in character creation, and shifts the power game to one of tactics rather than build. The result is that much of the discussion about the game treats it as if it’s exclusively a tactical combat game (because most discussing the game are crypto-power-gamers), rather than a fantasy RPG, and the most enthusiastic players push back hard against any kind of reframing. But it has a ton of support fo roleplay focused tables, and it pares down easily for casual tables.
Plus, you know, it’s free! And it’s fairly easy to convert from 3.x/PF1, meaning that there’s a whole generation of content out there for it beyond first party offerings, for just a little more effort than standard prep.
We don’t do that here. The GM provides the model of physics the players accept and expect. If the GM just says “nah” when stuff is inconvenient, players don’t know what to expect, and the world becomes inconsistent.
A big part of the GM’s fun in TTRPGs is improving off that. Players always ruin my plans, but that’s part of the game.
Yes, exactly. Consistency is important, because it builds and reinforces trust. The GM just saying “nah” is the other side of the player showing up with a homebrew bullshit build.
I get a lot of pushback from the Pathfinder 2e subreddit for promoting the idea that the system is really great for character-driven, fiction-first tables, because everyone just looks at the number of rules and goes “it’s so obviously a gameist system, why would you ever try to run it as anything else?”, and the answer is it’s a fantastic physics system. The rules provide clarity and consistency where it’s really useful or important, and are easily ignorable where it doesn’t matter.
Yep, the problem with 5e is all the bullshit exceptions to the rules you have to deal with. My biggest most obvious issue every player deals with is bonus actions. They were never playtested and added really late to 5e, and it shows. It’s something like: you can use a bonus action for any action that says it can be used as a bonus action, except you can’t cast a spell with it if you’ve already cast a spell this turn… except for some spells sometimes. The P2e method of everything just costing a set amount of action points, and if you have enough you can always do it, is so much better for players and DMs. It’s just consistent and you know what to expect.
There’s still plenty of room for the DM, but the rules can always be trusted.
I haven’t played Pathfinder. Next time I pick up epic fantasy, I think I’d like to give it a shot.
You’ve triggered my trap card. I’m going to do the special interest info-dump now. Apologies in advance.
It’s good. It’s written a little weird – it uses inheritance, like computer programming, which can be a little more difficult to wrap you head around than it needs to be if you’re not at least a little familiar with coding, and it’s written as if it’s doing everything possible to shut down rules lawyers, so whatever doesn’t read like API documentation reads a bit like legalese – but the actual system is nice.
It’s highly balanced, which is an awful word that its fanbase doesn’t seem to understand, but it means that it totally shuts down winning in character creation, and shifts the power game to one of tactics rather than build. The result is that much of the discussion about the game treats it as if it’s exclusively a tactical combat game (because most discussing the game are crypto-power-gamers), rather than a fantasy RPG, and the most enthusiastic players push back hard against any kind of reframing. But it has a ton of support fo roleplay focused tables, and it pares down easily for casual tables.
Plus, you know, it’s free! And it’s fairly easy to convert from 3.x/PF1, meaning that there’s a whole generation of content out there for it beyond first party offerings, for just a little more effort than standard prep.
You forgot the most important part: it isn’t owned by Hasbro! Even if it didn’t have any of the advantages it does over 5e, this alone would be huge.
Touché! A truth I have really started to take for granted.
Neat! I’ll have to take a look sometime. Thanks for the explainer.
I GM a fair bit, so the idea of a healthy collection of modules is compelling.