Unpopular D&D Opinions

[dafrca]

You want a toolkit, you pick up Fudge. Witch I've been wanting to do in print for ages, but have never got around to.

I tried Fudge as part of a group and really didn't like it. Maybe it was just us, but we gave up on it after trying it for a few games. But to be honest, I do know a few folks who swear by Fate/Fudge and use it exclusively.

[OldTrees1]

@OldTrees1,

Touché, and (senility willing) I'll have to think about that.

(And I knew I shouldn't have tried to address the question until I knew what the question was.)

I think we're at risk of getting lost in the weeds of the… line… "parallel", the example, the metaphor.

I detailed the process by which one could evaluate - at least at "sniff test" level, and arguably completely - how well something matches my terms. Senility willing (senility willing, I'll edit this post, and paste that into this reply). Seems to me that picking that apart would be more valuable than evaluating my metaphor?

Granted, demonstrating the weakness of my metaphor does… Hmmm… help demonstrate the likely vectors in which the actual "product" might fail. So… sure, it's valuable as *one* source of test cases (but we should not limit ourselves to *just* seeing if it falls apart in the same way).

Do I sound completely insane, or did any of that make sense? (My mind isn't working well today, so I'm honestly not sure how much sense I'm making)

I hope your mind feels better.

I feel like you did inject a subjective judgement. I think it is fine to have opinions based on subjective judgements. It is rather hard to have opinions that exclude all subjective judgement or that adequately take account of everyone's subjective judgements. So pointing out the subjective element is not something we need to get defensive about, even if it can trigger that response.

I am rolling back the subthread to a quote you made 2 days ago. That might help avoid some "weeds" by following the metaphor.

However first, you mentioned me in that quote. Let's celebrate shared interests before we discuss.

I play Wizards; I'm more "falls on the side of the muggle supremacists", tbh.

That said, I think the description given by oldtrees1 is much closer than "casting magic all the time" to describing my position on the "what I want magical beings to do" front (which, obviously, is unrelated to my position in my first post regarding balance).

I feel you. I like the feeling that a mage can do, or even be magic rather than the feeling of them being a delivery system for a finite amount of magic.

On the other hand, almost every suggestion I have is about how to make the non mages have level appropriate features.

… well, my answer is gonna be weird.

To me, "role-playing" means giving answers as the character (close enough? You know what I mean, right?), answering "WWQD?".

A sensible start. It is perfectly okay that this is not a universal position. This sets your arbitrary criteria.

In 5e D&D, the RNG is generally far more a factor than skill. Usually, a group of buffoons will do better than the trained professional.

So, in a reality that uses 5e, when a teacher asks a class, "why do we have governments?", it's highly likely that a student will give a better answer than what the teacher knows. The flow of knowledge is from the many to the one.

I can envision a society that follows this humorously inverted logic, and build a character who grew up in that society. So that, when it comes to solving problems in a 5e universe, I don't have to break character to suggest throwing more bodies at the problem, to know that "crowd-sourcing" is the tech of choice.

A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.

The underlying idea here makes sense. You ask what your character would do, and then you do it.

However it feels like it is applied inconsistently. There are some parts of the rules that you let inform you about the world and other parts you don't. When you run into a conflict with a rule that you did not let inform you about the world then you have judged that rule as making WWQD impossible.

If we assume some hidden metric between which rules are permitted to inform, and which rules are not, then your concern about RPGs boils down to how prevalent and intrusive are the rules that are not permitted to inform.

You describe the existence of the two types later and give a clue as to how they are divided.

When the mechanics force you out of actor stance, because what's obvious to everyone at the table as the correct/best answer is impossible to achieve as a reasonable, trained response in character, when you cannot build a setting that makes sense of the rules, then it's not an RPG.

When the system explicitly prohibits you from taking actions that would be in character to take ("but… there aren't rules for…"), and this occurs too often / for too many important choices / forces too great a deviation from WWQD, then it's not an RPG.

It seems the division between the rules Quertus allows to inform VS the rules Quertus does not allow to inform depend on whether Quertus can incorporate them into the verisimilitude of the campaign world. You did this in 5E by incorporating crowd sourcing as a technique the characters would naturally use in their world given the 1d20 is big compared to the modifier.

At this point we have a subjective opinion about an objective standard that talks about a subjective effect. I don't think Cluedrew's objection comes in yet.

It feels like the next thing you do is elevate your own subjective experience "4E pulls Quertus out of the actor stance" and then draw the conclusion that "4E pulls players out of the actor stance" which would then lead to your conclusion that 4E is not an RPG by this definition/standard.

What if I informed you that "There exist some players, where 4E does not pull them out of the actor stance.", would that change your logic at this step?

Now I am not one of those players. Even 3E can pull me out of the actor stance on occasion. However I think you made an unsupported inuitive leap that because 4E reliably pulls you out of the actor stance, therefore it has that impact on enough other players that 4E does not register as an RPG by your metric under your estimation.

Unsupported intuitive leaps are fine. Many opinions are based on them. They do make those opinions less conniving to others, but I don't think this thread is about convincing others.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yup. Being unpopular opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not commonly agreed with.

Totally. I don't submit that most of the unpopular opinions I hold come from the equally uncommon opinion that 'D&D is the worst game on the market'. I mean not the worst game ever, but certainly the worst over played. Although scarily even The Game Which Must Not Be Named might have been surpassed from a rules standpoint.

I tried Fudge as part of a group and really didn't like it. Maybe it was just us, but we gave up on it after trying it for a few games. But to be honest, I do know a few folks who swear by Fate/Fudge and use it exclusively.

Eh, not every game is for everybody

Seriously, there's more problems with refusing to try than with just honestly disliking it.

[Tanarii]

Totally. I don't submit that most of the unpopular opinions I hold come from the equally uncommon opinion that 'D&D is the worst game on the market'. I mean not the worst game ever, but certainly the worst over played.

Conversely, I find Fate to be one of the least interesting of RPGs I've read but would never want to play. The target style of play just don't hold any appeal in the first place. But if I did want to engage with it, I'd probably try PbtA first, preferably Blades in the Dark.

[Pex]

Yup. Being unpopular opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not commonly agreed with.

I'll remember this next time if, you know.

[Shpadoinkle]

Power attack should be just a universal ability rather then a feat.

Finesse weapon should be a weapon option, not a feat.

Check out the 'Elephant in the room' article, it address stuff like this.

[Tanarii]

I'll remember this next time if, you know.

I'll just reclassify my opinion as fact.

[Cluedrew]

No, it's not subjective. So I need to reword... strike that. I could try, but still fail, because, while I know what the disconnect is, I don't know where the disconnect is. [...] Who knows, maybe I'm just being dumb, and there is an angle at which my definition fails objectivity. But... from my (singular, biased) position, I don't see it. So my bet's on "miscommunication".

Cluedrew's Razor*: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to miscommunication."

In other words: yup. In fact I skipped over some other interesting posts because this one is going to require a lot of thinking.

Also I am skipping over the second part because OldTrees1 said a lot of what I would say about to say it. I would like to add that quite literally licensed doctor can be subjective as you can be a licensed doctor in one country and not allowed to practice in another. And most people call 4e an- You know what I do have things to say about second part but its basically: That metaphor is not helping. So I'm just going to go back to where I think subjectivity creeps into your definition.

A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.

This here is the core of it.** Actually both of them really come down to: are things that effect the decisions a character makes objective? Not really no. In fact last time this came up I rattled off a couple of things found in all (many?) editions of D&D that I found negatively effected my ability to role-play my character. You had no issue with them. The obstacles you listed in regards to 4e never really came up for me. So can you objectively prove I shouldn't be jolted out-of-character by weird HP scaling but skill modifiers only being whatever apart should? I mean even if that is the norm it will not be true for everybody.

As an add on there is also the matter of matching the system. A lot of the systems that I know that have good personality/decision-making rules are only good in the context of that system. And other systems that are designed for the same kinds of characters facing the same kind of experience. Complaining that it doesn't handle characters outside of that is like complaining that D&D doesn't have good farm management. Why would it?

So whether something is helpful, harmful or neutral depends on both the player and the rest of the system. And maybe some other things.

I don't know whether to respond with "agreed" "disagree" or "challenge accepted".

This line is great. Just on its own. I have nothing else to add.

* or Hanlon's Extended Razor, I did create the second part but I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has said similar things already.
** Thanks for the formatting trick too. Separates references from responses.

[AlexanderML]

I prefer it when there is less races and wild species to choose from. After a while it makes each individual non-human more annoying and less interesting. When DMing I tend to just give the bonuses non-humans would have to different ethnic groups in my settings when possible, leaving things like dwarves and elves to be npcs for the most part.

I like my wizards to be able to fly invisibly over the enemy shooting down fireballs. (I do like warriors being able to do cool things without magic, but I don't think that's unpopular.)

I like alignments in d&d... though only in games set in the Great Wheel.

[Draconi Redfir]

Check out the 'Elephant in the room' article, it address stuff like this.

yeah i read that a few weeks back.

unfortunately DM isn't interested in implementing those changes. ahwell.

[Satinavian]

- D&Ds skill systems are utter garbage for every single edition. The game would really benefit from ditching it and adding a proper one that is more than some afterthought.

- D&D has too much focus on combat. Autors just can't decide whether it should be a skirmish tabletop or a roleplaying game. Making combat central again and every possible PC a combatant formost was a bad idea to solve screentime issues.

- For all those species it has, humans play way to an important role in every single setting. We really need some official ones where they either don't exist or are at least rare and exotic.

- The "magic user" class that morphed into wizard should be abolishished in favor of forced specialisation (and new classes). We don't need a class that is about all kinds of magic at once anymore.

[Anonymouswizard]

Conversely, I find Fate to be one of the least interesting of RPGs I've read but would never want to play. The target style of play just don't hold any appeal in the first place. But if I did want to engage with it, I'd probably try PbtA first, preferably Blades in the Dark.

It's totally fair. I like it, and I can't imagine running a game with some kind of game freedom to make sure everybody's on the same page.

Do want to try training a Forged in the Dark game though. Probably Scum & Villainy, as it's the one I own.

[Xervous]

I'll just reclassify my opinion as fact.

Looks like you’re ready for politics!


Also: level 1, slay 5 rats/goblins (but not any with nasty weapons)/lame dogs starts are a sacred cow that needs to be minced into hamburger. The GM can put you in over your head at any time, give me a Ninja Gaiden tutorial over an MMO house cleaning intro. One of the things 4e got right was level 1 characters felt competent and whole.

[HidesHisEyes]

My unpopular opinion: D&D is best when there’s lots of combat. (I mean modern D&D, I’d say 3rd edition onward. I’m told the TSR editions were very different).

[kyoryu]

My unpopular opinion: D&D is best when there’s lots of combat. (I mean modern D&D, I’d say 3rd edition onward. I’m told the TSR editions were very different).

Yes, and yes.

When you use the best parts of the game, you get the best games.

[KineticDiplomat]

1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"

2. D&D was built around a very Tolkien perspective (not in of itself a bad thing), and whenever it deviates from that base perspective- in power, worldview, etc - it starts to fall apart

[Lord Raziere]

1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"

Yeah, DnD combat is like cheap beer: a lot of people drink it, but the moment you can get something better, you go for that instead. DnD however benefits from the "second place" effect where because no one can agree on their favorite/first choice, they end up compromising to play what everyone knows.

[Tanarii]

1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"

Curious what systems you find that do it better.

It's not that I doubt they exist. It's just that I'm not really familiar with any.

Certainly warhammer, Shadowrun, palladium, anything white Wolf, anything PbtA, torchbearer/Crane games, godbound ... not an improvement. I do like Fria Liga (Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands) because it's more deadly, but I don't think it's superior overall.

[Draconi Redfir]

I'll agree with some other posters here and say that D&D has too many intelligent races in general.

personally i think i'd set it so the only major players would be Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Gnomes, Halflings, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears.

Things like Ifrit, Sylph, Undine, and Oread could just be templates added onto humans

Drow, Wood/high elves and other Elven subtypes could be templates added to Elves

any other intelligent race like Tortle, Centaur, Gnoll, or Kobold i could maybe see as only existing in one small settlement or area, but being mostly unheard of otherwise. or maybe they're closer to feral or stone-age levels of intelligence, with the odd PC being a rare exception due to magic or the like.

Gnolls and Kobolds i could definitely see as being more feral then intelligent.



on that note, Dragons should be feral beasts rather then hyper-intelligent beings. Feel they'd be more interesting that way.

[DigoDragon]

Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Based on the two current groups I'm on, the rate is about 50%. I started back in AD&D 2e, then moved up to 3.5 and now 5e is my jam. I know two players who can do THAC0 calcs in their head like nobody's business.

• D&D is most interesting when you let it get weird, particularly in character creation. Like if I were designing a new edition, core race selection would be something like bugbear, pixie, displacer beast, hengeyokai, shardmind, and horse. Core classes might be swordmage, warlord (with a note specifying that they can indeed literally reattach someone's hand with a good pep talk), artificer, runepriest, and psion. If you want to be a human fighter, wait for a couple expansions.

Are we talking ordinary earth-like horses, or smaller pastel-colored magical ones? Asking for a build. ;)

I do agree that weirdness makes D&D more fun. I think that's why all these D&D movies just don't land right. Too generic and ordinary. I have some of the old 2e modules and they got really creative with things/settings. I mean like... Spelljammer. Just day the name and you can find a group nod in appreciation.

[kyoryu]

Curious what systems you find that do it better.

It's not that I doubt they exist. It's just that I'm not really familiar with any.

Certainly warhammer, Shadowrun, palladium, anything white Wolf, anything PbtA, torchbearer/Crane games, godbound ... not an improvement. I do like Fria Liga (Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands) because it's more deadly, but I don't think it's superior overall.

Well if you mean combat, it depends on how you define better.

Actually that applies to most things.

I'm not a fan of D&D combat in general. 5e combat hits a weird spot of "takes a lot of time, but most of the decisions are fairly obvious" that doesn't really work for me. 4e was good, but sloooow. 3.x seems more of an optimization game than anything.

AW combat is at least fast and gets to the point. Fate combat allows a lot of freedom in "non-hit-it-with-a-stick-or-explosion" stuff. Crane games could be fun if I wanted to spend the time to really really get into the combat system (but I don't so they too fall flat). Savage Worlds seems to have a good balance on tactical and speed, but I'd need to play it more.

(note: this is all to me. I'm sure D&D of various editions hits a lot of peoples' sweet spots.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is as fast as possible, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

[JNAProductions]

Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is gay as ideas, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

Autocorrect get you there? Because that first bit makes not much sense :P

[RustyArcana]

Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Started with 3.5, happily play 3.5, 4E and 5E.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Here's a really unpopular opinion (or so I believe):

4e's basic cosmology (the World Axis IIRC) was much much better than the Great Wheel of 2e/3e. Heck, a random bundle of planes thrown together without care would be better than the Great Wheel.

Another (related) unpopular opinion:

Planescape was mostly an exercise in esoteric mumbo-jumbo with a side of box-checking/symmetry-obsession[1]. Shoehorning everything into the alignment strait-jacket and making sure you had the right boxes checked for each alignment made it bloated; filling it with pseudo-philosophical jargon just made it impenetrable. Using it as the basic model was a mistake.

[1] And that's coming from someone who struggles to not draw perfect circles and squares, preferring right angles and pure symmetry everywhere, so that's an argument against interest.

[Kymme]

Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is as fast as possible, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

There's really no feeling like having an exciting and dynamic set piece involving the whole party (that would have been like 3 hours of a D&D session) take like 40 minutes, and then afterwards have like four or five more of those before the session is over. Stripping out the unnecessary busywork involved with combat and focusing in purely on the action, the drama, and the stakes is something I never thought possible until I started branching out from D&D.

[Tanarii]

There's really no feeling like having an exciting and dynamic set piece involving the whole party (that would have been like 3 hours of a D&D session) take like 40 minutes, and then afterwards have like four or five more of those before the session is over. Stripping out the unnecessary busywork involved with combat and focusing in purely on the action, the drama, and the stakes is something I never thought possible until I started branching out from D&D.

40 minutes is a long time for a D&D 5e combat. AD&D was fast too.

4e was very slow though. It was a struggle to get through a 4-combat official play adventure night in a single 4 hour sitting. 3e is somewhere in between.

[oxybe]

40min for a 5e fight sounds about right IMO, esp once you hit the double digit levels.

Admittingly 2 of our 5 players can be rather slow, with one being the "i haven't done my character math on my sheet so i must do it every round" type and seems to forget his abilities every other round while the other just seems to have information go in one ear and out the other so must be re-explained things frequently. me and the other 2 guys take our turns pretty quick.

The problem, outside of the 2 slow players, is that monsters tend to be... spongey.

I dunno if it's the module we're playing but every other fight seems to just be a resource drain and exercise in wading through a largely uninteresting muck of hp. When the mooks thrown at you are more interesting and engaging then the "boss" there is a design problem somewhere.

The mooks in question were kamikaze "dies when touched by a light breeze" who did an AoE "save or take a level of exhaustion" when killed. it forced us to remember that non-lethal damage existed.

The boss was a "scary demon" who's gimmick was multi-attack, a ton of HP and an at-will teleport, but had no reason to use the latter except to get stuck into melee combat or escape with an un-counterspellable teleport you couldn't OA when it blipped out of danger. I think our barbarian ended up taking 200+ damage that fight, and that's not even accounting for the fact it chewed through my ward and the barbarian's damage reducing aura thing trying to protect the warlock from being sashimi'd.

[Quertus]

I don't think it's simple though. I could say 'give the rules to an online community, and see if they're still discovering new interactions after 10 years?' but...

Lol. Gotcha (I think). In that case… I've seen both.

I suspect it's more… author inclination, like GMs that struggle to think beyond, "the only way to…" vs actual physics, based on the distribution by author from my sample. I'd be more sure if anything I've personally written actually had adequate… line… "volume of content" to measure along such vectors.

But, yeah, most people don't write that way innately! Humans tend to oversimplify as a matter of course, and the issue you've observed is simply a logical extension of this all too human behavior.

I hope your mind feels better.

Better, but not good, thanks. I still look at anything, say, you or NichG write, and have to bite my tongue (figuratively, not literally) to not ask, "can you dumb that down for me?", and, anytime I post, have to cross my fingers (literally and figuratively) that I'm making sense. Gimme a couple days, and I should be back within RNG.

A sensible start. It is perfectly okay that this is not a universal position. This sets your arbitrary criteria..

"Arbitrary" is… line… what I thought maybe people actually meant when they said… line… "subjective".

However it feels like it is applied inconsistently. There are some parts of the rules that you let inform you about the world and other parts you don't. When you run into a conflict with a rule that you did not let inform you about the world then you have judged that rule as making WWQD impossible.

If we assume some hidden metric between which rules are permitted to inform, and which rules are not, then your concern about RPGs boils down to how prevalent and intrusive are the rules that are not permitted to inform..

I'm… not able to evaluate this yet. But I'm keeping it a) to circle back to later, and b) because I have, on my own, detected an inconsistency in my thought process (regarding "territory" vs "map"). It'll be funny if they're… related.

You describe the existence of the two types later and give a clue as to how they are divided.



It seems the division between the rules Quertus allows to inform VS the rules Quertus does not allow to inform depend on whether Quertus can incorporate them into the verisimilitude of the campaign world. You did this in 5E by incorporating crowd sourcing as a technique the characters would naturally use in their world given the 1d20 is big compared to the modifier.

At this point we have a subjective opinion about an objective standard that talks about a subjective effect. I don't think Cluedrew's objection comes in yet.

It feels like the next thing you do is elevate your own subjective experience "4E pulls Quertus out of the actor stance" and then draw the conclusion that "4E pulls players out of the actor stance" which would then lead to your conclusion that 4E is not an RPG by this definition/standard.

What if I informed you that "There exist some players, where 4E does not pull them out of the actor stance.", would that change your logic at this step?.

Close? Kinda?

It's not about the… uh… experiences of a single player. It's about… the ability to program an AI. Or… to reprogram an AI that has already been loaded with "this world".

It's… not an absolute (although I show my inner Sith and often word it that way) of "has this", but a… how quickly, how often, how different, how much effort to fix.

Like… if I told you to change this post from personal (I / you) to impersonal (one / a player), vs if one were asked to reword this post such that the letter 'e' was not used… it'd be a noticeably different undertaking, no?

Now I am not one of those players. Even 3E can pull me out of the actor stance on occasion. However I think you made an unsupported inuitive leap that because 4E reliably pulls you out of the actor stance, therefore it has that impact on enough other players that 4E does not register as an RPG by your metric under your estimation.

Unsupported intuitive leaps are fine. Many opinions are based on them. They do make those opinions less conniving to others, but I don't think this thread is about convincing others.

1) I have my own personal local echo chamber of how bad 4e is in this (and other) regards. So it's not just me. (Not that it being just me would stop me, mind, I'm just pointing out how the idea is pre-vetted, rather than singular personal experience)

2) long ago, when challenged about "HPs can't…", I rose to that challenge and pointed out how they could (even though they didn't need to) for the base case, and numerous additions, until it hit edge cases beyond my (granted, comparatively stunted) comprehension. Contrariwise, I have yet to see, even from the Playground, a satisfactory response to even the most rudimentary of versimilitudinal failings of 4e.

So, to circle back, unless someone can provide a "patch" to the 4e thought process, I cannot call it an RPG. Of course, if I cannot resolve my territory/map inconsistency dilemma, I may be forced to reevaluate that status for other games, as well.

Cluedrew's Razor*: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to miscommunication."

In other words: yup. In fact I skipped over some other interesting posts because this one is going to require a lot of thinking.

Oh no! And here my brain is on vacation!

I hope you don't miss out on good conversations / learning experiences.

That metaphor is not helping.

I was afraid of that (wasn't I? (Darn senility)).

are things that effect the decisions a character makes objective? Not really no. In fact last time this came up I rattled off a couple of things found in all (many?) editions of D&D that I found negatively effected my ability to role-play my character. You had no issue with them. The obstacles you listed in regards to 4e never really came up for me. So can you objectively prove I shouldn't be jolted out-of-character by weird HP scaling but skill modifiers only being whatever apart should? I mean even if that is the norm it will not be true for everybody.

It's not… "you" or "me", it's… well, it's "how would I program an AI to parse this?". It's the character, not the player.

Thus its relationship to my definition of role-playing involving working forwards from first principles.

As an add on there is also the matter of matching the system. A lot of the systems that I know that have good personality/decision-making rules are only good in the context of that system. And other systems that are designed for the same kinds of characters facing the same kind of experience. Complaining that it doesn't handle characters outside of that is like complaining that D&D doesn't have good farm management. Why would it?

So whether something is helpful, harmful or neutral depends on both the player and the rest of the system. And maybe some other things.

I feel this is important, but cannot process it.

This line is great. Just on its own. I have nothing else to add.

Glad you enjoyed it! I do try to not exclusively post in the dry tone of my signature academia mage.

** Thanks for the formatting trick too. Separates references from responses.

I thought it added clarity. Sadly, I've no recollection of where / from whom I got the idea.

[Pex]

For some people how long a combat takes matters, but for others and me it doesn't. What's important is it be fun to play. There's no harm in trying to speed up play where one can. Players should pay attention, know what their character can do, and apply that knowledge on their turn. However, I have no problem whatsoever with a player trying to optimize his turn. Tactics are important. Defeat the bad guys in as few rounds as possible. Do not harm party members in the process unless permission granted to take one for the team. Analysis paralysis is a thing, but it's in the players' interest to take the time to figure out where to place effects whether it be your character's position or a power. The bad guys have the advantage of working together at the speed of DM thought. Players are entitled to have the time to coordinate.