RoBoTNiK

"Day of I'm-Not-Really-Going-Anywhere-With-This"

I can't believe I didn't respond to this. And now it's too late.

Anyway. I can and will rebutt one thing, the bit about the slogging through cumbersome systems such as D&D 3e and cumbersome settings such as Planescape -- I do that deliberately, for fear that otherwise I'd drown the players in a sea of ineffability.

ME: "The landfire dices with you over the matter of the seventeen harlots. Roll."
THEM: "I got a 4."
ME: "The landfire chortles and consumes in its alloverpowering hunger the seventeen harlots, your horse's bridle, and your sense of self-worth."
THEM: "...I dodge?"
ME: "Roll."
THEM: "I got a 2."
ME: "The landscape buckles under the stress of your majesty as your rip asunder this pale and ineffectual natural world in favor of a higher realm of desires and concepts."
THEM: "So was that successful, or...?"
ME: "The landfire is quenched by the onslaught of your dreams of evasion."
THEM: "...Can I loot the body and get my sense of self-worth back?"
ME: "Roll."
THEM: "I botch."
ME: "As you search the quenched fires you are set upon by a squadron of angels, terrible in their wrath."
THEM: "Huh?"
ME: "They arrest you for seventh-degree world-sundering and drag you in coral chains before the Court of Unhappy Torts and Blue-Green Misfortunes, where you are sentenced to eight years without bathing."
THEM: "..."
ME: "The magistrate, a corpulent Thursday afternoon, looks up from his meal of virginal asps to wax rhapsodic on your criminal tendencies and sin."
THEM: "...Can't I defend yourself?"
ME: "You have no sense of self-worth, so can't bring yourself to act in your own defense unless you spend a point of Willpower."
THEM: "I thought we were playing GURPS."
ME: "Oh, right. Make a Will roll and spend three points of fatigue, then."

And so on.