best way to respond to negative criticism of your work is the Chad Yes

like a middle-aged white man trying to sell a 1993 GMC Sierra for $9,000, i know what i have

*takes place. lol

at least, in theory, anyways. in practice, it's a huge mess, and that's beautiful

but it's also beneficial to give tables the freedom to violate the logical precepts of the world you've created in favor of mood and tone. that's what mechanics do, they bind everyone together so that the kind of stories they tell tend to dovetail without you needing to tell them what to do

to me, a shared world, whether loosely or tightly interpreted, and a shared practice of imagining it and telling stories within it is much more fundamental than where exactly the interpretation takes places. and most FRPers know this intuitively, or come to know it eventually

world that was internally consistent, in a much stronger way to the shared consensus assumptions that DnD players have about bards, or dragons, or peasants, or whether or not you're allowed to be lgbt. it was run more like an MMO

in particular, "tabletop" RPGs are and never were wholly games played at the literal or metaphorical table. Empire of the Petal Throne, for example, had its creator as its ultimate referee, and it was the telephone and postal network that let him do that. isolated games contributed to a shared