Recent content by Betote

Do you want teenaged males, ages 13-19? Get some teenaged females, ages 13-19 ;)

With the core rulebook you'll have all that you need and much, much more. If there's a single rpg book I like more than the Rules Cyclopedia, it's this one. The ones included in the core rulebook are pretty good starter adventures, actually. Beyond that, I'm quite fond of Horror in the Orient...

In fact, I generally enjoy DM'ing for people who play videogames. First of all, they understand the basics of tactics and strategy. And also, they're less prone to using the best single trick all the time: they play videogames for that, and when they abandon their WoW or their God of War, they...

Wishes: I've wanted for some time now to run the GDQ series, although there's always a new shiny to distract me from that. Failures: As for now, I've been unaware of the reported high level problems of 3.x, because all my campaigns seem to fall apart because of a TPK or real-world issues around...

The feeling I get the most when I read about Gabe's games is envy, mixed with a non-trivial amount of nostalgia. He's discovering the game, exploring what he can do with it, and that's something really, really cool that I miss doing. These days, when I tinker with my homebrews or flip through...

"Is"? Zelda was what drew me into roleplaying games, and it's been almost 20 years since then :D

I'll try not to be witty: * D&D Rules Cyclopedia. The best D&D one can find in just one book. * Call of Cthulhu v5.6. I was torn between this one and Trail of Cthulhu, but I went with the classic, as it has a broader scope. * Mongoose Traveller Core Book. Enough for any sci-fi setting. The...

In order to apply this idea to RPGs, we have to think about what's a choice. For example, Risus has no list of skills, Savage Worlds has a short list of broad skills and GURPS has a giganormous list of very specific skills. Which one of them gives us more possible choices? The same happens with...

Wow, there are scientific studies about Mouseguard? And here I thought it was just a game about pretending to be small rodent soldiers :D Imagination and play-pretend are always very dangerous things, aren't they? I think I read something about that topic... It was called "Dark Dungeons".

The problem with choices is that you have to live not only with what you chose, but most importantly with what you didn't choose. That said, even if too many choices can make you less happy in the long run, one thing players love more than anything is uniqueness, so we could argue that a player...

Right now, we are alternating Pathfinder and a fantasy heartbreaker from a member of our group. Now and then there are one-shots of Trail of Cthulhu or Savage Worlds, and I'm planning a Shadowrun campaign. Apart from that, and following Fifth Element's example, I'll mention our Saturday...

3E was marketed as a "return to the dungeon". They wanted to be linked to 1e, not 2e, and that meant, among other things, having Gary saying "I'm Gay Gygax and I endorse this D&D". And that's, more or less, what they paid him for, and what he did in his Dungeon/Dragon (I don't remember which of...

I'm going to suggest HackMaster 4E here. It gives the PCs the possibility of achieving great things while offering some nasty surprises and details as the critical things and the Honor rules. Of course, I'd never run HM as-is, but it comes pretty close.

Yes, you can. It depends on how you choose to phrase them. Words, they can be tricky ;)

Any price you pay for a Rules Cyclopedia will be money well spent: the RC is the single best D&D book ever published. In the meantime, I'd get a copy of Labyrinth Lord, which lacks some of the RC more complex rules (weapon specialization, skills, domains and mass combat), but is written in a...