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Some paladin traits? I believe his powers defined the original D&D paladin's powers -- in particular, protection from evil 10'.

In most of the world today, outside the modern economies of the US, Europe, etc., completely unskilled labor earns closer to $2 per day than $20.

More plausibly, a peasant would not acquire assets of any real value but would instead acquire a wife and then children. His "net worth" would take the form of surviving family.

Bad weather doesn't happen that often? Or, you don't go camping when the weather's expected to be bad? Yeah, if you're in open country, and you want to get back to your camp site, and the sun's still out, you're not too likely to get lost. If you're in the woods, blazing a trail, after the...

If you drive your truck up to the campsite, unload your supplies, and go for a hike, sure, it's fun. If you're trekking cross-country with all your food and gear on your back -- all your pre-modern food and gear -- and the weather changes, or you get lost, you could easily die out there. Or be...

Yes, agreed. The critical-hit charts from MERP (and Rolemaster) read like they're for a Heavy Metal RPG. They're full of geeky, sarcastic, dark humor: Blast annihilates entire skeleton. Reduced to a gelatinous pulp. Try a spatula. That's not Tolkien.

Everything varies for everyone, but I think it's pretty objectively hard to fit your own campaign into real-world history or a well-established fictional setting -- especially if any of your players know the setting better than you do. Certainly it's easier to write swords & sorcery fiction in...

I love the way it means creature, demon, or child: wight (n.) O.E. wiht "living being, creature," from P.Gmc. *wekhtiz (cf. O.S. wiht "thing, demon," Du. wicht "a little child," O.H.G. wiht "thing, creature, demon," Ger. Wicht "creature, infant," O.N. vettr "thing, creature," Swed. vätte...

Yes, exactly. In modern English, we spell that with a "b".

I think the language of the critical hit charts is wrong for Middle Earth, but the substance seems to match the source material quite nicely, with so many important characters taken out or grievously injured in one or two shots. Come to think of it, isn't it odd that they didn't use language...

Are you thinking of the Rolemaster Lite critical-hit charts?

There's a sweet spot in between creating your own setting from scratch and fitting your own campaign into someone else's setting and epic story-line. It seems to me that the designers of the game, when coming up with a new edition, should go through the list of famous fantasy characters and...

I just got around to reading Washington Irving's delightful "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which turns out not to be at all gothic -- or horrific. One point of interest for gamers is that Irving twice uses the word wight -- to mean fellow, without the slightest hint of death or undeath.

D&D doesn't reflect this well, but imagine a race of elves, all high level, but all with one hit die. How would they fight an orc horde?

The first step is admitting that you have a problem. ;)

That's quite an understatement. Being "immortal" in a quasi-medieval setting might not mean much, unless you were also wealthy yet not committed to military service. And motherhood would be a terrible risk...

Totally unlike fantasy...

Vathek even ends in an enormous underground palace. Of course, this enormous underground palace is -- spoiler alert -- basically hell, and he isn't there to battle his way through, paladin-style.

You can be married with kids and not carry credit-card debt. (We're not talking about mortgages or car payments here.) You have credit-card debt, and you expect to pay off your mortgage in 10 years? I suspect that austere means different things to different folks. Anyway, i think we all make...

If you're in debt, you definitely don't need any more RPG material. You know what to do, and I think you can do it. I'd even consider selling off the stuff you now realize you won't use any time soon.