Recent content by Celebrim

Not hit to me but I'm happy to field it as well, even at the risk of colliding in the outfield and making the blooper real. a) We did not convert to yards for area of effect outdoors. Unsure if that is RAW or not given the lack of clarity and agreement in the text. b) Yes. Also we had to...

a) In theory it would be but I don't recall anyone doing so. b) I only recall ever adopting one rule from 1e AD&D and then dropping it. Generally when I discovered a rule I liked it. A good example of this is that after a few years of play I finally figured out what the "Weapon vs. AC"...

No. Not at all. Rather, this is Gary telling you about his own campaign style (which he assumes everyone is ultimately headed toward) which is what a modern gamer would describe as "West Marches" style. And under that style, absolutely it is true that you can't have a meaningful campaign...

This doesn't seem to me to address any problems I actually have at the table. This to me looks like pure theory crafting. A lot of this reminds me of my theory crafting and design back in the 1990s and I got to tell you, you aren't designing rules for a table top social roleplaying game. You...

There are two things going on, particularly in the 1e AD&D DMG. One, Gygax gives some of the strongest examples of play and descriptions of play in any rulebook ever written. That passage with the party investigating a dungeon that ends in one of them getting randomly eaten by a ghoul with...

~$189-$270 US. That's 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 silver pieces, or an equivalent number of gold pieces if you use a gold piece standard where everything is normally priced in gold pieces. A good test is how much is a dagger. If you price a knife or dagger in gold pieces, then it's highly likely 1 gold...

So I am going to cut against the grain by saying it is imperative everyone in the group is seeing roughly the same thing in their head. Players are taking actions and asking questions based on the scene they imagine in their head. Sometimes it is not clear for several minutes that those...

"He died in the war."

Creativity. Social outlet. Watching and getting feedback from people enjoying my creativity. As a player, solving problems, enjoying other people's creativity, immersing myself in the character and the lore of the setting.

So like @haakon1 I build my assumptions about prices from wages. One reason for this is that D&D price lists are historically jacked up and highly unreliable owing to two different pricing structures developing. The Player's Handbook price lists utilizing a gold piece economy and this is...

I'd put it differently, though largely agreeing with you. The PCs are the protagonists of the GMs story, but they have shared goals to solve whatever problem that the GM has poised for them - often as a conceit of the campaign. "So you are all pirates..." or "So you all have a reason to hate...

sigh Only because you are new at this. This is an almost invariable problem that will show up in the first session or two. Someone, flush with their first character and thinking that they are really thinking out of the box, and possibly with a background in videogames where nothing you do has...

Eight players is tough to manage, even for an experienced GM. So the main thing to remember is the sort of game you can run as a GM depends very heavily on the number of (and particulars of) the players you have. If you have 1 to 3 players, you can run a game that depends very heavily on...

I mean if I'm engaged in Trad Play it doesn't matter if I think the scene would get cooler if even more orcs showed up from the next room when the text says the next room is empty. Considerations about what would be "cool" or "exciting" don't come into play. In Trad Play you are trying to...

This is a good point. It's probably best to not begin a discussion without defining terms. I was assuming that "narrative game" referred to games that were influenced by the narrativist viewpoint of GNS theory, but this could be incorrect. I don't think they ignore the "internal elements of...