Now Its Abby

lemme put it this way; european longswords and european cannons are siblings. they emerged at basically the same time in the early 1300s, and when the longsword was at its peak use in the mid-1400s, the musket was beginning to proliferate.

likewise, the 'modern' style of katana only started being made in the century leading up to the introduction of muskets to Japan; in fact, the reason the katana became The Samurai Sword was because it was a small practical blade you could wear while you carried a gun.

this post's hypothetical by itself is already ridiculous but the thing that gets me is how the wording implies two very funny things that become funnier in tandem

1. "Accidentally, the pitcher tosses a Christian baby" means this is a mistake on the pitcher's part. i imagine the pitcher is breastfeeding on the field and they pitch and they look down at their hands and they see the ball still in the glove and they go "fuck"

THAT SOLVES NOTHING, sure, it makes it better. Its not the same friend skipping playing every week, but someone still has to skip playing.

Most modern ttrpgs ive seen either treat the GM as a referee that is supposed to follow the rules, or as an auteur that turns the game the players are going through into a performance. One is a computer and one is an artist, neither of them are gamers.

Older ttrpgs may treat the GM as an oppositional force to the players, but still gives them total power over the game, leading to the classic "rocks fall, everyone dies" situation.

GMs dont have a game to play, they don't have a win condition or lose condition, and they don't have obstacles set by the system to make reaching those conditions a game.

Draw steel and Daggerheart do have metacurrencies that serve as obstacles, which could be a great starting point. Draw Steel's Malice feels more to me like a difficulty dial players can shift, with the GM being only able to choose which Malice abilities to use, but Im also of the opinion that GMs shouldnt be left alone during combat, I make flowcharts for the monsters I make so that the GM can at least have a baseline of what the monster wants to do in every situation, and ideally Malice would be included there (the GM could always ignore it, but the flowchart is meant to mimic the decission process of a monster, even at the detriment of their combat skill if needed). Daggerheart's Fear does have a bit more variety, but its also very similar in its limitations.

I've been working on a ttrpg for time now trying to do exactly this. The sort of asymmetric play is compelling, but very difficult to implement!

A GMless game can be like an old roguelike with near 100% proc gen. The rules for how the player interacts with the world is defined but almost nothing is intentional. Everything is emergent.

I can also see what you mean with the GM being a level designer, but lately Ive been separating Game Master and Game Designer in my mind, which means the GM is not necessarily responsible for setting the initial conditions of the enviroment.

Inquisitor Jane Shepard of the Ordo Xenos - vigilant protector of humanity from alien threats. Many criticised her for her radical methods, but result is irrefutable.

A lot of D&D5e defenders on here like to claim that asking someone to learn a new system is "gatekeeping" somehow, but I'd argue that acting like one game is emblematic of the entire medium to the exclusion of people who don't click with that one game is way more meaningfully a form of gatekeeping, even if it's fully unintentional.

Hasbro is fucking lying.

Their game does one very specific thing in an extremely specific way, and are exploiting unpaid game designers to sell the illusion otherwise.