I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
What would it take to make it a RPG? Some characters are flawed in certain things while excel at others. But what you want your character to be, its in your hands due to how you build your character. That´s part of your character, same goes to the backstory you may have developed and inform your build.
Well they could stop gamifying RP and exploration so players actually get into character instead of just rolling dice. But that’s a pretty fundamental shift, so they won’t do it.
But how does roling dice, when the outcome of a situation is uncertain, inhibit you from roleplaying your character?
It doesn’t. It just conditions players towards not doing it by replacing interacting with the world with interacting with rules and dice. Which doesn’t stop experienced players, but misleads new players in a video game mindset.
Let me get this straight: you don’t like crunchy rule sets, you don’t like character builds and progression and you don’t like rolling dice? Sounds to me like you don’t like TTRPGs.
I mean you can just read a story to your players or skip the whole tabletop part altogether and do an improv theatre session.
Where did I say I don’t like dice or crunch? I literally run Hackmaster. You don’t even know Hackmaster do you? Sure I don’t like bloated player options that cause power creep and slow the game down. But that doesn’t mean I do sloppy improv or storytell railroads like Critical Role or Dimension 20.
I’ve only been running rpgs 20 years. Has it occurred to you that you don’t like rpgs if you just play 5e or PF2. Are you even a gamemaster?
