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Depends on the game. Some games are about relationships, and it would be a bit weird if they didn't come up. Some games have mechanical support for them (a lot of games do, for that matter) and so if it comes up it's going to have plenty of focus. Some just have settings or themes that flat-out...

Branch out and try some new games and maybe infuse the group with some new blood as well. Anyone can get in a rut -- you need to act deliberately to get out.

I would go with Greg Stolze's Reign.

D&D 3.0. I remember AD&D 1st ed. very fondly, but it's not my favourite. 3.5 was the death knell for my D&D campaign -- I don't think I ever ran a D&D game again. That might have happened anyway, though.

Make the detour to Endgame! You will not be disappointed.

Well, regarding player's guides, if you buy Diaspora (our FATE-based sf game) from the Evil Hat crew, you get the PDF for free. You have my permission to share that with your table. It's certainly a hard sf game (well, except for the FTL travel) and the book is designed to evoke a physics text...

I try to build books that follow the course of play and avoid as much as possible forward references. So that means that the core of the system is presented early, character generation next (since it relies on the system to make sense), and then details of the system. Finally adventure...

Sure; most FATE games do this with a five phase character creation sequence in which at least one of the phases requires building a sentence or two connecting the player's character with a another player's character. The phase results in an attribute that reflects whatever was interesting in...

I generally like a system that neatly creates interconnections between characters without elaborate backstory. If there's a nifty mechanism for making those interconnections zing, well that's even more awesome. I also like, "you are a team, you've worked together before, and here is your...

There are none in CT. The ref was expected to make up difficulty modifiers on the fly. So any given check was 8+ but the ref might assign a difficulty of -3 or whatever she felt was appropriate.

July 20th.

Publishers submit product for review by judges. Judges pick nominees. Public votes on nominees to determine the winner.

I am thrilled -- and blown away -- to see our own Hollowpoint in here not once but three times! This is a really unexpected list, full of great titles by smart people. Going to be a very difficult voting period. Thanks, ENnie team!

Our game, Hollowpoint, was not designed with women in mind (or men for that matter) but it has a startlingly high female buyer (and player, and play reporter) demographic. Almost every play report I've collected has at least one woman at the table, most are closer to 50% and more than half are...

Only in Dungeons & Dragons, really. I can't think of a way to make optimal character builds in anything else I play.

There's a great chase system in Diversifying Diaspora (Diversifying Diaspora v1.0 | Diaspora | RPGGeek) that's designed for FATE systems but could be very easily adapted to something else.

Maybe strangely, but for me it was the games themeselves. I was instantly sucked in by the idea that there was a book that could codify, organize, constrain, and amplify the free-form let's pretend that I was doing anyway (wasn't every 10-year-old?). I didn't start reading or watching...

One of the things I've done that helps is to make sure that the characters have relationships -- with NPCs, with unwritten characters (a mother, an uncle, an ex-commander) and that the GM brings these relationships into the game in relevant ways. Ideally some facet of the adventure hooks into or...

Yeah I'll second the One Ring as a mainstream game that really does something novel and useful. I also get great games our of FATE systems (maybe obviously, given that we wrote one) and have a great time exploring and developing even more niche games. We've had outstanding sessions with Reign, A...

Hmm, how best to answer this...well, let's just say that no one at the table cares in the least what alphabet the lizardmen use. I, however, will prepare that information anyway.