A few months ago @/iammattsanders and I started making a concerted effort to play as many different games as possible - and, where possible, to play them with other designers.
The aim of this was largely just because we wanted to play games - that& #39;s obvious, right? - but also we wanted to treat it sort of like a reading group, where we& #39;d pull these things apart and figure out how and why they did what they did.
What works, what doesn& #39;t, how do we *define* whether something works - if it doesn& #39;t is it a failure of the system or is it just a reflection of what we personally want in games, etc.

Also what can we steal, of course.
An informal test we developed early on, that was entirely a reflection of our (mostly Matt& #39;s) preferred playstyle, was this: how easy does this game make it for me to use an improvised weapon and have that feel like a good decision?
(I guess this is going to be a long thread, but I don& #39;t know. I& #39;m thinking aloud and don& #39;t know where this is heading or if there& #39;s a point to it. I& #39;d tag it as ChopShop except that tag intimidates me because everyone on it is brilliant. Anyway.)
What I picked up on fairly quickly is that the more rules around combat and equipment a game has, the less likely it is for grabbing an improvised weapon to feel like an "optimal" choice, and that makes it less fun.
Something like AiME, with it& #39;s 5e base, doesn& #39;t make this satisfying. The rules exist for doing this stuff, but they& #39;re interacted with so infrequently that very few GMs know them off the top of their head. This leads to one of two scenarios.
Thread continues here because I broke it like a fool https://twitter.com/pangalactic/status/1308665340176601089?s=20">https://twitter.com/pangalact...
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