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It wouldn't surprise me if Pathfinder is getting a boost from the popularity of 5e. WoTC offers very little that falls into the "impulse buy" category, their stuff is almost all major products like core books or mega adventures. But I can pick up an adventure or one of the local setting guides...

I tend to agree that cultural appropriation is a no value added term. Except for a few extreme cases, people who decry cultural appropriation insist that they're not advocating for unbreachable walls between cultures (as though that could possibly make any sense in any case), so that no one who...

I guess it's a matter of what one uses a published setting for. To me the more apt analogy would be going to TGI Fridays, ordering a cheesburger, and then not putting ketchup on it even though they left a bottle of ketchup on the table. I use published setting material for the maps, cities, and...

In answer to your first question: 1) As others have noted, FR has consistently been TSR/WoTC's most popular and profitable setting for a long time. 2) WoTC has made it clear that their vision moving forward is of D&D as a multimedia property. With the novels and computer games, FR already has a...

When 4e came out, I bought all 3 core books sight unseen within a few weeks of release. I felt sufficiently burned by that decision that, when 5e came out, I waited a while and finally took the plunge about 6 months in. I wonder to what extent the sustained sales are driven by people like me...

Maybe there is some confusion between the internet vs BBS's? True, few people were on the internet in 1982, but I can remember occasionally dialing up to BBS's from 1984 onward, and I wasn't especially ahead of the curve as far as I know. I think there were definitely BBS based rpg discussions...

Maybe there is some confusion between the internet vs BBS's? True, few people were on the internet in 1982, but I can remember occasionally dialing up to BBS's from 1984 onward, and I wasn't especially ahead of the curve as far as I know. I think there were definitely BBS based rpg discussions...

This is a clearer version of what I was trying to say. If someone already sees you and is looking right at you, you can't just go "poof" and disappear. Something has to happen to make it feasible, like there's a loud noise behind them that makes them turn around and while their back is turned...

I saw that line as mainly just asserting the primacy of common sense. E.g. If you're standing in the middle of a well lit room surrounded by people only a few feet away who are looking right at you, you can't hide simply because there is a "hide" skill written on your character sheet.

I get the feeling that for some people, getting digital media (pdfs, music, movies, whatever) for free is their primary hobby, irrespective of what the media actually is.

WRT the discussion about stealth, I think some people think that excessive clarification ends up as an attempt to take the DM out of the picture. As someone mentioned earlier, there are potentially an almost infinite variety of situations in which someone could try to hide, and it's pointless to...

Absolutely. In addition to scenario design & flavor, the other thing the third party publishers did was figure out innovative ways to use the game's mechanics. Skill challenges are a perfect case in point. They always struck me as the kernel of a good idea that just wasn't developed well. If...

Completely agree that Keep on the Shadowfell did 4e no favors at all. Compare that to the early days of 3e when things like Green Ronin's Freeport series were coming out. H.P. Lovecraft + pirates of the Caribbean = pure awesome. It was stuff like that, not the details of the system itself, that...

Nostalgia may play a role, but I don't think it can be the whole story. I was around 30 when 3e came out. If my preferences were entirely nostalgia driven, I should have rejected it because it wasn't the game I spent all those hours playing in high school. Instead, I enthusiastically started up...

Severely limiting the ability of PCs to craft magic items would go a long way toward solving many of the caster dominance problems that seem to have plagued 3.5. In another thread, someone was talking about it being common for the wizard to be walking around with an arsenal of 20 (!!!) wands...

Exactly. When I read the PHs from earlier editions I get a strong sense of the game world and how the mechanics fit into and reinforce that world: even though no "setting" is being introduced. I think part of the issue is the design ethos (that was already growing in the late 3.5 era and was...

Readability is important for me because I DM most of the time and I get ideas and inspiration from picking up the rule books and reading a page here and there. If I pick up the Players Handbook from 1st 2nd or 3rd edition and start reading at a random page, I start mentally taking notes...

I agree with this. 3e is very different from 1&2e, but that's not immediately apparent. You have to play for a while in order for the differences to become clear (when they did become clear I switched to Castles & Crusades and have stuck with it ever since). In 4e the differences club you over...

Back in the 80s, between differing interpretations of the written rules (because they were sometimes vague), house rules, the various "unofficial" rules and classes in Dragon magazine, and just differing play styles, different groups were often playing what amounted to wildly different games...

D&D is "an rpg so why not just make the best rpg you can?" in the same way that coke is "a beverage so why not make the best beverage you can?" If Coca Cola started marketing a non-carbonated orange flavored drink that comes in a box as "coke", a lot of people wouldn't accept it, even if it was...