Recent content by Ariosto

Can they also fight (by whatever means) as effectively as fighters? In that case, they are not well-balanced in terms of abilities! The premise in the original D&D game was that the types had different 'costs' associated with them. The chief cost for magic-users was survival (unlikelihood thereof).

All told, Traveller (especially "Classic") is my favorite, but here are some others I have enjoyed for particular reasons. 2300 AD had pretty nifty background of "harder" SF sort, with some really interesting planets. Space Opera IMO perfectly captured its namesake genre, and had a ton of...

The big ones in my gang have been Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

As Spatula said, more information would be helpful. V&V is definitely more slender than Champions, etc., and a new edition came out a few years ago. Marvel Super Heroes (TSR's "FASERIP" system) is dead simple, especially without the Advanced elaborations. There's a retro-remake called Four...

Something like the Talislanta approach can work for a start: a wide variety of basically pregenerated character types. Provide a systematic way for customization, for folks who want that -- but don't make it mandatory.

XP were/are great for the kind of game in which they were originally developed. That is not necessarily the kind of game most FRPers are playing today.

What to say? His creations will continue to delight new generations.

I disagree with the necessity to have degrees of success and failure -- but you can easily make it so that those who like them can use them and the rest can ignore them. I like the system in Chaosium's 1st/2nd ed. RuneQuest (and also simpler variations since). The main thing about that is...

That's a key point. I would say that in some ways, the WotC rules sets are better suited to the kind of game my usual circle these days enjoys. However, there is too much else too tightly bound in. I've got one player who basically doesn't want to be bothered with needing to learn formal...

Here are some more oldies that I think have not been mentioned: Task Force Games did Heroes of Olympus. Lee Gold's Lands of Adventure (Fantasy Games Unlimited) had a brief treatment of a Greek and Pelasgian Milieu. Man, Myth and Magic is one I never encountered, but if memory of advertising...

This is one of those things, I think, that's better to include in the package for use or not than to leave unaddressed. I threw out most of the D&D levels and spells systems for some games back in the day, but minimalism and DMs needing to make up lots of tailored material is not necessarily a...

I think the 4e designers did a fair job of keeping familiar terms where they used things more or less resembling their old referents. For that matter, consider the retention of the old range of ability scores when the bonus factors are what really get used (and rolling dice to generate them is...

Maybe the rest of the world is not 'wrong' just because Mr. Edwards and his friends happen to like using words in odd ways. Sorry, Ron & Co., but my friends and I are not about to call a style of play 'pervy'! (Caveat: I understand that term is now outmoded among Forge-ites.)

In my experience, when the Original/Advanced/Basic rules are applied without 'nerfing' and 'fudging', MUs tend to die with a frquency that accelerates by level when they confront rival peers.

With something like the Welsh longbow, you can pretty nearly have defense from fire alone versus massed formations. It takes a lot of specialized training and physical development, but of course one expects that of hero-class figures. On the other hand, heroes and monsters in the RPG context...