Ethos of the Gaming Den

[deaddmwalking]

A month ago a one-time frequent poster on the Gaming Den started a review of the Tomes. The discussion thread there has already been closed down. Personally, I feel that the review included things that were both factually incorrect and multiple statements that were almost a 180 degree misrepresentation of 'the ethos' described by the den.

I invited Libertad to post his review here on the Den as well because I felt that it would generate some interesting discussion, but he elected not to. Regarding the review of the Tomes, I did have this to say:

Regarding the Tomes, specifically, when 3.x was the supported edition, there were a lot of people having trouble with high-level play, and lots of DMs were focused on controlling the party power-level to make high level play FEEL like low level play. There was real DEMAND for high-level play - they even published the Epic Level Handbook, so turning the dial to 11 is something that some people wanted. Frank (and K) gave suggestions for balancing the game around the higher power tier that casters already achieved... Instead of dialing back, you could add more gas. And you'd expect things to break harder and faster, but they don't. While I don't play a 'Tomes Game', I know people who do (and have for years). It's one style of play, and it's not for everyone. What I think your review is missing is that leaning in to the power level really did go against the general consensus at the time.

That's really I want to say about the specific review, but I do think it's possible to unpack some things about the Gaming Den, in General.

First off, it's important to recognize that throughout the busiest periods of discussion there was no single monolithic orthodoxy. Libertad spent a lot of time discussing 'the cult of Frank', but there were lots of posters that were here specifically to disagree with him - and they're part of the den, too! There were also a lot of people who agreed in large part about some of the descriptions of problems but disagreed with prescriptions, in part because design-goals were never a priori assumed. If you had different objectives, obviously you would want to consider different methods. In that vein I'd like to lay out what I think the Gaming Den represented (and potentially represents though the level of discourse is low).

1) The Gaming Den Was Primarily Focused on Improving Game Design

Game mechanics must be followed to the letter, irrespective of the spirit of the rules. Edge cases and implicit outcomes that aren't clearly spelled out are a fault of the system, and in and of themselves are enough to make a system a badly-designed failure.

I don't think that Libertad's assessment is correct. It's clear that people on the den were extremely interested in 'house-rules', so following game-mechanics blindly was never an important part of the community. My perception is people would frequently say something along the lines of 'well I don't use those rules, so they aren't a problem in my game'. And that, frankly, is the crux of the issue. If the game rules don't generate the results you want or expect, they aren't good rules. I have seen at least two examples in the last week of designers saying 'don't follow [my rules] as written, a big part of running the game is using common sense to determine when to make decisions without rolling at all'.

Common sense isn't so common.

It's hard to expect a GM, especially someone new or inexperienced to confidently determine in advance when the game rules are going to betray them and yield results that are not satisfying to any of the players. The game designer isn't available to coach them, and video examples of how to run a game weren't widely available until recently. If the rules can't be relied upon, that's important to know. In order to determine what happens if you follow the rules, it's important to follow them. An argument that amounts to 'the rules are good because I, as a good GM, stop following them when they break', isn't a defense of the rules as much as it is a recognition that a good GM can work with an incomplete ruleset or work around sections that produce unwanted results. If a good GM is cutting out sections of the game routinely, it's pretty clear that those rules could be improved. Any focus on the 'rules as written' is to determine if they provide outputs that are consistent with what's desired.

Discussions on this point can be difficult. If the rules say 'activities that require manual dexterity like tying a knot require a skill check', it's true that calling for a check every time a character ties their shoes is unnecessary. That said, if calling for a roll ends up with the character regularly injured due to critical failure rules it's clear that what the rules say and what happens in the game world don't really map together. The rules about when not to call for a check should be explicit - or at the very least there's room for misunderstanding and disagreement.

Thus the first 'ethos' of the Gaming Den is that we focus on the rules that actually exist to evaluate whether they achieve the design goals they profess to aim for - and it is against those design goals that they are judged.

There's plenty of room to discuss whether specific design goals are worthwhile, but given a specific design goal, a rule can be evaluated based on whether it drives the behavior that is expected.

2) Games Should be Fun For Everyone

Favoritism of players in the social contract. The Gaming Den's ideal view of a Dungeon Master is akin to that of a physics engine in a video game: their primary role is to manage the objective mechanics in the game world, de-empasizing [sic] their nature as judge and arbiter of the rules. They encourage the removal of as many elements that can be left to DM Fiat as possible, for fear of such power being abused.

There's no doubt that the Game Master has a lot of responsibilities. Making adventures is time-consuming and often thankless work. Players expect a good time; when the GM doesn't deliver it can be really deflating. The more the GM has to fill in for rules (making judgement calls or interpreting unclear rules) there's more room for disagreements and misunderstandings, and people can have their feelings hurt. When the rules are silent and a player thinks that they should be able to do something and the GM determines that they should not, the player isn't going to blame the rules - they'll blame the GM. From the GMs perspective, if they're aware of what the player wants, they're balancing 'making the game fun, now' versus 'what's good for the game, in the future'. Players enjoy finding exploits that 'solve' combat problems, but the game isn't fun (at least for most people) if there is no challenge. For an example of this, check out the Twilight Zone Episode 'A Nice Place to Visit'.

Clear and comprehensive rules help reduce the need for the GM to make these determinations when they don't want to. What if the rules say 'do x' and the GM wants to 'do y'?

That's 'rule 0', and whether the game says you can or can't, you absolutely can! I honestly don't know if my family plays UNO! the right way, but we play the way we play and we have fun. We could read the rules and figure out what we're doing wrong, but even if we knew, we probably wouldn't change. We're having fun.

There's an important point there; we have fun. We're all playing by the same rules and we know what they are, so we're all playing the same game. When you look at a role-playing game, players make decisions about their character based on their understanding of what those rules are. When a rule is changed, that should be clearly communicated to the players. If you build a fire-based evoker and then find out that house-rules apply that all fire spells start massive fires burning everything flammable within the area (even though the rules SPECIFICALLY say that doesn't happen), you may not be happy playing a character that doesn't work the way you intended and expected.

Thus the second ethos of the Gaming Den is that the rules should be clear to ALL PARTICIPANTS including the players so everyone can make informed decisions, increasing their AGENCY in the game

There are a lot of people who don't feel this way - some GMs like players who don't know the rules and they feel comfortable letting the player say what they want to do and the GM finding a way to translate that into game terms. This is a preference, not a universal truth. Definitions of fun aren't universal, but the people who posted most on the site leaned strongly toward KNOWING the rules, and allowing players to make informed decisions based on those rules.

3)Published Rules Should be Better Than Not Having Rules at All

Avoidance of "Magical Tea Party," a term that refers to any element of an RPG that is improvised or doesn't make use of explicit rules in the system. While it ties into the above, the term is so frequently used on the Den as to be an independent section.

The consensus opinion on the Den was that no was likely to have explicit rules for every possible set of circumstances that could occur, though a robust (or rules-lite system with a flexible resolution system) could be broadly applicable. The thing about rules is that they need to produce outputs that are consistent with the expectations of the genre and the players. When rules when applied as written consistent with the spirit of the rules continually produces undesirable outcomes, those rules really shouldn't be used at all. The GM is forced to make things up (hopefully with the understanding and agreement of the players) to keep the game running. When the rules aren't governing your actions or resolutions, that can be described as 'playing magical tea party'.

There are two types of situations where you might find yourself outside of the rules. The first is in a circumstance that is just so unusual the game designers didn't really plan for it. The rules for D&D flight for bird-like creatures don't talk about atmospheric density. Can a crow fly in a room that the air has been removed from? If that comes up, the GM is going to have to a make a call and it doesn't really matter what decision they make - it's probably not going to happen again. It's going to be a judgement call on how little air is in the room and how much air is required for a bird to fly. There are lots of ways existing rules can potentially inform your decision such as allowing a check with a penalty, but ultimately you're outside of the rules and what you end up doing is based on what the shared imaginations of the people at the table decide is reasonable - just like when you play games of imagination like magic tea party.

The other situation that you find yourself outside of the rules is typically very different - it's a time when the game EXPECTS a situation to come up frequently. In those cases, if the rules CONSISTENTLY produce results that are bad WHEN THE RULES ARE APPLIED IN THE SPIRIT THEY ARE WRITTEN, using the rules is itself a bad thing. An easy example of this is a skill like Diplomacy. Characters could potentially stack bonuses and turn a Hostile opponent to Friendly consistently. There are lots of ways you can 'fix' the bad rules. You can make DCs scale, you can reduce stacking of bonuses, you can redefine what Helpful means... But since you're deliberately NOT using the rules and you're making up something 'that works for your group', you're again playing a game of imagination like magic tea party. This can be fun, and with a good GM you won't miss the rules at all (remember, they make bad things happen). But looked at from a game design perspective, the game rules FAILED to produce results at least as good as a group of friends could do with cooperative discussion.

A lot of people play TTRPGs in part because they don't know what the result of play will be. Players can be surprised; they might be defeated when they expected to win - they may make an enemy when they expected to make an ally. When a consensus decision is made, it takes it away from 'what would happen if my character were a real person confronted with that situation' and makes it something akin to authorial fiction. If all you want is to decide what cool things should happen, you don't need rules at all. While not all players care equally about the capabilities of the character determining outcomes, it's important enough that there are a lot of invectives levied at GMs who stick to their plot regardless of what the players do.

Thus the third ethos of the Gaming Den is that each rule should be at least as good at Magical Tea Party.

Magical Tea Party is FREE and every group can decide how to move the game forward without the rules in their own way, so paying money for rules that tell you how to handle common situations in the game that don't work is rather insulting. Magical Tea Party can be fun, so this is actually a higher hurdle than it might first appear, and lots of games fail in this regard.

Libertad had some other thoughts about what the philosophy of the Gaming Den is/was, but I don't think they're true, or even point to an underlying truth, but I do think they're worth looking at.

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition must be balanced against the standards of highly-optimized primary spellcasters making use of particular game-breaking exploits. Case in point, using Planar Binding and Candles of Invocation to entrap noble efreeti and djinnis into getting multiple castings of the Wish spell as early as 9th level, which is the lynchpin of what the Tome authors call the Wish Economy.

This is a case of a game being evaluated based on it's design criteria. In the case of D&D 3.x, the game rules said that characters of equal CR were expected to be roughly equal in capability. This didn't mean EXACTLY equal - there are 'bruisers' that are CR 9 that are stronger and tougher than magical creatures with spells and spell-effects; some of them they can expect to beat and some they can expect to lose to. Characters, too, are given a CR rating. When a PC class appears as an opponent, they're given a CR just like a monster would be. When some classes are consistently on par with monsters of their CR and others are lower, it's clear that the design goal doesn't output what is expected. All characters could be balanced to ANY POINT, but if you claim that they are BALANCED, it should be true. In the case of 3.x, there were a lot of people who were frustrated because they were following the LETTER and SPIRIT of the rules, but games were breaking. Raising under-performing classes rather than nerfing over-performing classes wasn't the consensus way to make the game work, but it's at least a reasonable approach. As for the Wish Economy, that actually IS a NERF. One way that games break is that players get more money/equipment than is expected. GMs were contorting themselves to avoid giving overpowered equipment. Dragon hoards went from tens of thousands of gold coins to a literal handful of gold. Creating a tier where material wealth can't buy whatever you want removes the incentive to carefully loot every scrap of armor and every poorly made weapon to save up to buy Excalibur. The Den didn't argue that optimizing to casters was the only way, but they were one of the only places that explored that. Even with that said, the Wish Economy limits what casters can do in ways that make the game more broken in a variety of ways governed by turning literal tons of copper into Excalibur.

Rules as a physics engine, where the underlying mechanics of gameplay can persist independently of player and DM input. Events that occur during downtime and between adventures must abide by game mechanics and not be handwaved. This is done for the ultimate purpose of presenting a world that is greater than the people sitting at the table. In practical terms, players and DMs rolling dice in isolation outside of game night to generate outcomes are viewed as either a legitimate exploit of the rules, or nigh-mandatory in order to assure that the next adventure starts in a way that is believable to the group. For example, let's say that the town's silver dragon guardian is poisoned and can only be cured by an exotic herb. Well, the DM better roll the dragon a Fortitude save to see if the adventure the DM desires can even be run!

There are lot of people who like a procedurally generated world. There are people that have charts for determining the weather from one day to the next in their fantasy world. I don't think I've ever met anyone here or elsewhere that believes that all physics for the world MUST be run at all times and all places. I do think there are a lot of people who want the game world to have a certain amount of consistency. If a character's action matter at all, it has to be because they're changing the world around them based on the choices they make. If they go on a mission to save the Silver Dragon from a poison and fail, the dragon probably does have to die. If the GM decides that a Natural 20 on a Fortitude save would absolve the players from failure, he could just choose the version of reality where this dragon is one of the 5% of the time that they miraculously prevail and can then assign a mission next session, but to some degree that cheapens the adventures of the PCs.

There are a lot of decisions the GM makes that players never see. If they're completely inconsistent with how the world is described as working, that hurts verisimilitude. If they're completely inconsistent with how the players THINK the world works, there's some room for an interesting reveal and a good dramatic moment. There's no doubt that the GM has more information than the other players to determine the underlying physics of the world. Abandoning consistency has costs, and it shouldn't be done lightly. My experience is that GMs like to choose events that are in-line with expectations.

Selective realism, where certain elements that break suspension of disbelief in the game must be re-designed in such a way as to solve the contradiction. For example, if the stats for a real-world animal in the game don't line up with modern understanding of real-world zoology, then the stats should either be redesigned or the DM comes up with an in-universe explanation of why it's "not like other animals." In practical terms, Frank & K inconsistently apply this based on their own subjective suspension of disbelief, where they can handwave away elements they don't care about but then treat unrealistic rules concerning subjects they care about as a failure of the system.

If the rules are applied consistently with their SPIRIT and bad results occur, changing the rules seems like a very reasonable outcome. If housecats end up being the most deadly monster in the game, something has probably gone wrong. Rather than insist the rules are correct and the world should change, changing the creature seems reasonable. Given the choice and choosing NOT to make the change, exploring what that looks like in the world is entirely reasonable. If cats are more dangerous than dragons, maybe PCs want to throw cats in dragon's faces. Or maybe that's a bad idea because that's going to be one pissed-off pussy. Undesirable results can vary from group to group. I don't think there's anything wrong with 'selective realism'. We're okay with fireballs that defy conservation of energy, so realism at all costs isn't something that people at the den argue for. In fact, people at the den are generally okay with a lot LESS realism than other sites (things like Rogues avoiding a fireball cast in a 5' square with solid walls on all sides). Regardless of how your personal feelings on any particular issue go, if the rules consistently generate results that are unsatisfying (and/or inconsistent with the genre expectations), changing those is ABSOLUTELY CONSISTENT with the points I laid out above.

Anti-social behavior on the part of players and Dungeon Masters should be dealt with via in-game retribution rather than via out-of-character discussion. If someone at the gaming table is acting like an anti-social weirdo and cannot be punished "in-game," that is a failure of the system and not a failure of the offender at the table. In practical terms, the Gaming Den has encouraged passive-aggressive gaming for their own benefits, such as giving tips to posters who want to ruin a campaign they're currently in to make a point, usually about pulling off a rules exploit that can break the game.

This one just doesn't align with anything I've ever encountered on the Den. Quotes provided in support of this point appear to indicate the opposite.

If the rules say 'here's how something works' and a player is using those rules and it 'results in bad outcomes for the game', that would be something that would be appropriate to change. That said, if the player invested a lot of time and resources in creating a character and they're having fun, there are different expectations about the game. Having the GM resort to 'Gygaxian Dickery' to punish the player for making a character that is 'too effective' is absolutely not what anyone on the Den advocates for. In terms of the events in the game, the GM has absolute power as evinced by the saying 'rocks fall, everyone dies'. That isn't a license to do what they want - it's definitely unsportsmanlike to end a game so abruptly.

There's really two ways I think you could be confused on this point. The first is MISTAKENLY believing that resolving differences in expectation OUTSIDE OF THE GAME is something the den doesn't support. Things like X Cards and out of game discussions that are in vogue now are absolutely the types of things that get support in a place like this. The second is failing to understand what applying the consequences to the game are. If the players determine that throwing a cat into the face of a dragon is the optimal strategy, and you don't change the rules, the game world will be modified by that and throwing cats into people's faces will be a recognized and frequently used strategy. This isn't a PUNISHMENT toward the player - this is the world reacting like a real world with consistency. If guns are better than bows, societies will adopt the gun in place of the bow. Taking an exploit and exploring how that changes the world can be fun - that's what most speculative science fiction does.

I'm sure there are a lot of 'passive aggressive weirdos' who play RPGs. If you decide to play with someone like that there are likely to be situations where they want the rules to be interpreted in a way that is favorable to them. Having CLEAR RULES makes it easier to play with people who might be antisocial. The rules don't have to punish them - as long as it's clear what they can and can't do and everyone can have fun in that framework, that's GOOD! If the rules aren't clear, there is the potential for considerable conflict as players and the GM negotiate what is 'fair'. Again, I don't think that qualifies as a punishment, but I think that's something that people at the Den are generally in favor of.

I know there exist a number of disagreements on what the goals of certain games should be, and what methods best meet those criteria. That said, I think that one reason the Den is such a quiet place is that the discussions that did happen really helped a lot of people consider how they wanted to design their own game(s). There is a lot that I took from the discussions that took place, and I have no doubt that the version of D&D that I play with my friends is significantly better because of the types of analysis and consideration we did. We still tinker and come across edge cases, but we have the tools to competently address them. The organization of the conversations may not make it easy, but for those who were here when the den was extremely active, it was possible to learn a lot just be reading along. I was a lurker long before I started posting, and the sensibilities that I absorbed really did a lot to make me a better designer and a better DM.

Wanting to push people to achieve that might be the Fourth, and perhaps most important ethos of the Gaming Den: everyone can benefit from review and analysis - most ideas can be improved with consideration and extrapolation, and when we find that our initial ideas don't achieve our aims, it's a good thing to consider other possibilities - to change our DESIGN rather than railing at the world for failures to achieve our aims with rules that point in a different direction.

I'm of course interested in what other people's takes are and encourage discussion and disagreement.

[Thaluikhain]

If they're completely inconsistent with how the world is described as working, that hurts verisimilitude. If they're completely inconsistent with how the players THINK the world works, there's some room for an interesting reveal and a good dramatic moment.

Erm...ok, minor point, but surely the way the world is described and the way the world is thought by the players to be should be the same? Or have I missed something?

[deaddmwalking]

If they're completely inconsistent with how the world is described as working, that hurts verisimilitude. If they're completely inconsistent with how the players THINK the world works, there's some room for an interesting reveal and a good dramatic moment.

Erm...ok, minor point, but surely the way the world is described and the way the world is thought by the players to be should be the same? Or have I missed something?

Players do enter the game with less information than the GM does, and sometimes that can lead them to believe something is true that really isn't. For example, you might have a mystery where you're exploring the depredations of what appears to be a undead creature. If the PCs fully prepare for fighting an undead creature and it turns out to be a flesh golem, the player's expectations may have been subverted, but it's still reasonable within the game.

There's a big difference between letting the players draw the wrong conclusion versus changing the answer after the players get it right.

Even if the creature is undead, it might have resistances or immunities to some of the most effective attacks against undead creatures. That makes it a puzzle monster. After the fight is over, any immunities that seem inexplicable should have an explanation.

I think players usually like to know what they're dealing with, and they usually prefer that their plans generally work, but there's still room to surprise players. Some GMs use that knowledge gap to change things after they've already been established. For example, I once had a GM who wanted to run an adventure that starts with all the players getting captured; they're supposed to be hit with multiple sleep spells at a high DC so the whole party is captured easily. Now, I happened to be playing an elf, so I pointed out that I'm immune to sleep effects. That interfered with the plot, so the GM said they weren't actually casting sleep, but a very SIMILAR spell that does effect elves.

If the GM knew that elves were immune to sleep, maybe he would have had creatures using blow darts that had a poison that caused unconsciousness on a failed Fortitude save. If that had been the case to start with, the end effect might have been the same, but it would have been consistent with the rules. Deciding that my character should be affected by sleep was disempowering in a way that building an encounter to avoid my strengths wouldn't necessarily be.

Players won't always have all the answers, and there are times where the GM can ask the players to trust that the opposition is still playing by the rules. But to maintain that trust, the GM does need to play by the rules. I'm sure there are GMs that don't agree - their opposition does whatever the story needs without regard to what the rules actually say.

Creators of the TV Show Lost insisted that they had an explanation so that everything in the show would make sense by the time it concluded. It turned out that they didn't have an explanation, and anything that might be used as an explanation was contradicted by other decisions they made. A lot of people felt BETRAYED by that decision. Even though they had enjoyed the show, finding out that it was all 'rule of cool' was a major let-down. A campaign can be the same way - people expect that there's an explanation for what's happening; if there isn't then none of their decisions or actions really have meaning.

There are some people who think it doesn't matter that the show ended so disappointingly as long as you enjoyed the ride up to that point.

I don't think insisting that you can never do that rises to the level of a 'den design philosophy', but I think there's a strong PREFERENCE for setting consistency. It might even be true that a large number of people on the Den historically would choose not to play in games that lack it. That doesn't mean that everything in the world has to be generated in advance and only things that have been previously established as existing can ever be used. The statement quoted above was meant to allow for some nuance and avoid strawman arguments claiming that everyone on the den is demanding full transparency at all times or they'll insist that the GM is cheating.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I'm not going to read that much Libertad. I have vague memories.

So, who knows if the meat of the "review" is right. But I can guess that it isn't based on the "summary" of the Gaming den ethos Libertad produces.

It isn't an intellectually honest summary of what the gaming den believes. I don't believe it is even an attempt at that.

It is, very clearly and obviously, an incompetent attempt at a smear. Every item on the list could instead have just read "The gaming den believes an obviously wrong thing for idiots! No really, they do! And in a weird nasty way! Trust me bro!"

It isn't worth addressing, and Libertad, clearly is too stupid or dishonest, or by the looks of it both, to communicate with rationally.

[deaddmwalking]

There definitely is a bit of a Judas vibe - a disciple of Frank that has rejected the faith and now seeks to betray the teacher.

Libertad in 2011 understood the wish economy better than Libertad in 2025. Libertad in 2012 was an unabashed Tome of Battle fanboi.

I assume that Frank said something very caustic about one of LIbertad's suggested mechanics. But it may be that Libertad was a Libertarian and Frank said mean things about his political beliefs instead.

So yes, I agree that it was probably intended as a hit job, and I'm not willing to spend the time now to determine the root cause. But I didn't start this thread to rebut the review of the Tomes but focus on what the Den represents (if anything at all).

[pragma]

Yeah, I've read this discussion on rpg.net and RPG pub, but haven't deemed it worthwhile to wade into semi explosive threads. The thing I like most about The Gaming Den is the ethos that a rule can be wrong or bad, and I'm disappointed that the summary of the Den didn't give that idea a fair shake. I recently pointed out that the combination of SR5 setting and roles appears to require infinite rolls to hack anything, and people didn't even acknowledge the rule was bad. The widespread unwillingness to separate "how tables play around a rule" from "the rule itself" drives me nuts.

(Of course, my views on how comprehensive a rule set needs to be have also evolved over time. I've come around to the idea that no rule is better than one that is infrequently used and hard to remember, but that's a matter of taste.)

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The thing I like most about The Gaming Den is the ethos that a rule can be wrong or bad, and I'm disappointed that the summary of the Den didn't give that idea a fair shake.

If you were writing an actual attempt to depict the ethos of the gaming den, that would definitely be high ranked on the list.

But stupid people emotionally invested in their rules set of the moment will, as Libertad did, receive any questioning of the quality of the rules they decided to like for no reason as an attack on themselves, and any attack on themselves as an authoritarian attack on freedom, and therefore must come hand in hand with a slavish unquestioning adherence to rules.

Which is how Libertad writes up a smear manifesto about how the gaming den is TOO invested in following rules to the letter... as presumably a defense of bad rules that Libertad inflexibly refuses to want changed.

It's stupid and backwards and wrong, because it isn't an argument founded in rationality. Its a smear that comes from a reactionary response from an idiot who doesn't like being implied to be wrong by association to a rule they like.

[Darth Rabbitt]

(I’m aware this thread is more focused on what the Den really is than what Libertad thinks it is, but I need to get this out of my system before I can even think about discussing the actual topic.)
Libertad is an idiot, a liar, or both. My own observations on his points, having read his grudge with Username17 poorly disguised as a “review”:
Point 1 is basically twisting “rules should be clear and concise, and do what they’re supposed to” into a negative statement. A consistent problem with Libertad’s review was that he’d read an example of a problematic rules exploit that F&K pointed out and imply they were endorsing said rule despite them saying “this is bad for the game, here’s a proposed fix.” Which leads us to:
Point 2 is Libertad misrepresenting Tome’s balance level entirely. Chain binding is given as an example, despite that being something that the infinite loops were specifically filed off of. (Tome material was mostly balanced around moderately optimized transmuter wizards and heavily optimized flask rogues, iirc.) The Wish Economy is actually built around what you can’t get with wish. As DDM points out, Libertad knew this in the past at least.
Point 3 is Libertad implying that fair rules are inherently adversarial to the DM. How “DMs should be impartial and rules should be fair to the players” is in opposition to DMs’ “nature as judge and arbiter of the rules” is beyond me unless Libertad thinks judges are supposed to be biased.
Point 4 is mostly correct, although as usual he frames it as a negative. Hell, I’d argue minimizing MTP in the rules to be good for DMs because it gives me more time to improvise things like “how NPCs would react to things that the PCs do that I didn’t expect” or any grey areas that do come up in play.
Point 5 is kind of just a repetition of point 3 but with an emphasis on world building rather than general play. The example of the dragon is weird to me, personally. If the dragon was suffering from a paralysis effect or something else it should be literally immune to that would be one thing, but if it’s just “a dragon you never met before failed a saving throw offscreen” then as long as it could fail the save I don’t think it’s a big deal for it to have rolled low. Idk, maybe that’s a me problem.
Point 6: this is a weird one because it’s less a design philosophy and more a claim that F&K may have been inconsistent in game design. For some reason it’s a really big deal to Libertad if he can perceive an inconsistency in the Tomes, possibly as an appeal to hypocrisy on his part. I think this is an attempt to present the Tomes’ emphasis on fantasy economies and ecologies as a glaring design flaw despite it not necessarily being one? For example, he gets really worked up about Username17 calling economics a “voodoo science” in the context of saying that the USSR experienced a period of massive growth, despite common economic wisdom at the time that such growth was impossible. Like, that’s not even a game design problem, it’s just thinking an example mentioned is inaccurate and using that as an ad hominem attack against the Tomes in general.
7. This is the exact point I realized Libertad had to be arguing in bad faith. The earlier examples could be caused by misreading or misremembering but this one actively contradicts not only the text of the Tomes but his own list of design goals (notably #3). The Tomes are filled with moments where saying in game retribution to moderate player behavior is the exact kind of thing you shouldn’t do. (Ironically, Libertad advocates for this kind of behavior a lot as his proposed “fixes” for exploits pointed out in the Tomes. Characters can generate infinite wealth loops? Well obviously someone powerful will punish them for it. Heaven forbid you just amend the rules to avoid said exploits.)

The rest of it just comes off as a smear piece on the Den in general and Username17 in particular; while I think you can critique both, you shouldn’t outright lie about what you’re criticizing like Libertad does. The whole thing is basically a cautionary tale about how not to review something.

Actually, having said all that I’d like to add one more design principle to DDMW’s list: harsh criticism isn’t necessarily unwarranted criticism. (Admittedly, this is a corollary of DDM’s 4th principle.) While I’ll admit plenty of Den arguments took things a bit far and often devolved into yelling contests, I don’t think “this game/rule is poorly designed and should be reworked” is something that should be dismissed out of hand. It’s a principle Libertad seemed to take repeated offense at…when he wasn’t busy claiming that The Den/F&K/Username17 was in favor of using broken rules as written. Dude should change his username to Oberoni Fallacy.

[Dogbert]

Did I get Mandela'd? Did I step into some alternate universe unwittingly? Because none of Libertad's quotes match anything of what I know of the Den. Sounds like Libertad drank the Trailblazer Kool-Aid.

If you ask me, the Den's main ethos (as a group) boil down to:

1) The shit I'm reading must make sense.
2) The GM may not be god, but the social contract is. What this social contract is depends on the game and its design objectives.
3) You better be ready to defend your shit before your peers.
3.5) Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. A system does what you designed it to do, not what your sales brochure says it does.