Recent content by Ourph

I am unable to vote because there is no poll option for "I find Robin Laws' categories to be completely unhelpful and inaccurate and wish RPG authors would stop referencing them in their design decisions.".

GM: Fritz Leiber Players (in no particular order) Eddie Izzard Hugh Laurie Erol Otus Clark Ashton Smith

I would be happy enough to see feats removed from the game completely. I would also be happy enough to see feats that give mathematical bonuses removed from the game completely. But the thing that would make me over-the-moon happy would be if they did away with the feats that add situational...

:: Spoiler Alert :: Clarshh's Sepulchre by Willie Walsh is one of my favorite Dungeon adventures and it prominently features a Crypt Thing at the end of the adventure. I've run this as a one-shot several times and it has worked great. The teleport ability allows the adventure to turn suddenly...

No. I haven't had a problem with any of the books I have purchased for 4e. In fact, I would say that 4e books are, overall, some of the most consistently well done RPG books I've ever purchased. It is very nice of WotC to release lots of errata for free in an attempt to improve the game for...

I like the places that are detailed to be highly detailed, but I also like having a lot of areas that are open to DM creativity. Unfortunately, my experience with campaign settings is that the authors generally put in the kind of details that I'm completely uninterested in.

Book distributors that service game stores also carry other kinds of books (fiction, non-fiction, textbooks), which means you can order them through your FLGS (if they want to take the time to process individual orders). My local store has done this for me in the past. The prices are slightly...

Cloaks eliminate the damage done by sunlight, which is 10hp/round for a vampire character. So, yeah, cloaks provide DR10 against sunlight.

Which are completely non-lethal depending on the situations the PCs find themselves in and the type of campaign and encounters the GM designs. The CoC combat rules are only lethal if people are using lethal weapons and playing a campaign where combat occurs (most of my CoC games attempt to hew...

And yet, none of them have any rule that insists the GM create campaigns or encounters where character death is a likely consequence.

That assumes the DM is eliminating death using one particular method. There numerous ways to eliminate death as a consequence that do not involve simply handwaving the situation when characters would otherwise die. This is a perfect example. If the players wanted a game where character death is...

I see what you mean. I don't necessarily agree that 4e is as different from other games by RAW as you do, but I don't want to derail the thread with unnecessary edition comparisons. I certainly concede that there are minimal mechanical consequences for death built into the 4e rules.

Despite my willingness to consider other styles, my current game (a 4e megadungeon sandbox) is a medium-high lethality game. We usually have a character death* every 5-6 sessions. I think 4e does a pretty good job of handling it. With the CB, rolling up a new character takes ~20 minutes on...

There are plenty of ways to have in-game consequences that matter to the players other than character death. I don't see why one consequence should be sacrosanct if it is one that the players don't find motivational or fun. I don't know; I've never had a player ask for that. Have you? If...

I think players are entitled to have fun. If the players don't find death as a consequence fun, then I think they are entitled to ask the DM (politely) to remove it from the game or to have some reasonably accessible way to work around it.