Trying to be "Less Wrong" in D&D
Shakespeare's Coriolanus D&D is, at a minimum, two games played in tandem. The first is the role playing; the "RP" of TTRPG. This is the collective improve experience that has a narrator/game master embodying everything in the world that isn't the players. I've personally found this game composes nearly 90% of my time at the table. I don't know if everyone has had similar experiences, but I can say that D&D for me is a roleplay-heavy experience. The other part, the "war game" part, is odd to me. It isn't that the arithmetic of this other game isn't fun; in fact, I'm deep in the junkyard that is optimization: I'm a living, breathing meme with a ream of characters that will never walk in the mind of anyone but me, and I regret none of the math making up the bones of that graveyard. No, it's not that combat isn't fun in D&D, it's that it isn't synergistic with the other game being played. I do believe that the...