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Went to protests, volunteered for better candidates, tried to get other people involved. The bare minimum, perhaps, but more than another run of Baldur's gate 3.

This whole conversation is at least using the words "DND" even if one could argue they're not actually talking about DND specifically. Thus, I was making the point that if you do want a system that rewards creative players DND is not a good one.

What system are you thinking of that stands in contrast to dnd's "explicit permissiveness"?

I'm not even sure what you mean by the "permissive interpretation". Is that the Calvinball mode? Games can definitely go badly when it turns into an inconsistent, unpredictable mess. Games have rules so we don't argue like children on the playground going "I hit you. No you didn't. Yes I did. I have a force field. Well I have an anti force field laser.."

My current plan is to wait for my basic coworkers to have kids, and those kids to be old enough to ask "what did you do in the 2020s to fight fascism?". They'll lie and say they did a lot, and I'll burst through the wall to shout "NO THEY DIDN'T. THEY DID SHIT. THEY STAYED HOME AND PLAYED VIDEO GAMES. YOUR DADDY IS A COWARD".

Hopefully somehow this will result in my coworkers dying alone and unloved in a pit of shame or something.

But the reality is their egos are indestructible and they will always think they're good people, and their kids will probably be the same.

Personally I rather dislike "5% of every attempt will be wacky", especially when multiplied by "higher level people are making more attempts, and thus are having more wackiness".

The fighter who makes three attacks a round is going to have three times as many "hilarious fumbles" compared to the lower level fighter only making one.

This is part of why I prefer dice pools over a flat single die system.

If you have a machine that runs Windows and the hardware is still good,

Linux is often more forgiving on hardware requirements. I recently put Mint (with xfce) on a like 2013 laptop and it's fine. That's not even an especially lightweight distribution.

D&D is great because it allows for creative freedom

This is not something unique to dnd! In fact, DND is not even especially good at this!

It's like people are saying "mayonnaise is great because you can add it to any meal", which is technically true, but meanwhile salt is right there being ignored on the shelf.

It's funny because the character who said that was very verbose, if I recall

Well, maybe. I think some people on the inside are embarrassed, and they then lash out or deflect to cover that up. "Yo reading is stupid", the guy says, crying on the inside because it's hard for him and he's too ashamed to ask for help.

But maybe some people are just regular proud to be illiterate

I think of lot of people are semi illiterate and embarrassed by it

What's with the weird censoring of the post metadata? Do we not want to credit the original poster for some reason?

But dnd's paradox is it is both open ended and rigid. My problem is it's too open ended in many ways (eg: social conflict), almost completely missing rules in other parts (eg: meta game mechanics, conceding conflicts), and too rigid in others (eg: Eldritch blast targeting rules, unarmed smite and sneak attack). That's not even going into the bigger problems like the adventuring day or how coarse class+level makes many concepts impractical at best.

On top of that, it is so mega popular many players have no other reference points and don't realize its assumptions are not universally true. It's like people who have only ever watched the Lord of the rings movies, and they're like "of course movies are four hours long and have horses. That's just how movies are."

The main things DND 5e does well are popular support, and the very small decision space for players makes it hard to make a character that's mechanically very weak or very strong. It brings nothing special to the table for roleplaying.

Compare with my go-to example of Fate, which has simple systems to encourage it. CofD, my second favorite, also does.

DND is a team game, and both have agreed upon rules. Not sure I follow your objection