Recent content by cwhs01

It circumvents a lot of potential monster abilities, hazards and traps and why would you want to allow that? Especially in 4e permanent flying makes a lot of tactics involving terrain features pointless. For example if pc's avoid most traps and obstacles by flying, it could also make skills...

"Why does confirmation bias allways happen to me" and also I saw an episode of the daily show where a physics teacher (an american ofcourse), posited that the CERN large hadron collider had a 50/50 chance of creating a black hole. His reasoning was something like this: "either it creates a...

Burning Empires. An indie game based on the Burning Wheel RPG and Iron Empires comic books. And also one of the crunchiest indie rpg's i've ever seen. I think it could technically be classified as a boardgame with rpg elements. And its also one of the best games i've seen, if you accept the...

The PnP RPG Ars Magica has the Vis concept. Raw distilled magic that can be used to fuel rituals, spells or create permanent magic items. I only know about 2nd and 3rd editions of the system, but i should think that it dates back to the original. White Wolf had something to do with one of the...

Story-games most often use "framing scenes" as a tool to ensure there will be interesting choices to make and that there is something at stake, something to loose and something to gain, from choosing. They also very often give authorial rights to the "players", allowing them to frame scenes...

This is probably one of the best ways i've seen to distinguish between the two concepts. While i personally see no reason they can't both be used in the same game, i do occasionally play with purists of either roleplay or story-games. Maybe it has something to do with seeing roleplay and...

This is a very cool idea. I'd really like to see if simply refluffing, and changing powersources is enough to make 4e fantasy into a playable sf/fantasy rpg. Things like changing names of classes, powers, equipment and powersources, but keeping the mechanics, stats and numbers. I suspect it...

I think this here may be the primary reason that people are angry or disappointed. I think there is a pretty good correlation between how long one has played dnd and how likely you are to be offended by any of the changes in the new edition. Familiarity with the implied setting and core...

I'll agree with you on this one. I'd quite like a little more background info together with the statblock. I don't find either to be imposibly difficult to come up with myself, but it would save a lot of time to have both. And i kinda miss the physical descriptions of monsters like size, weight...

Heh, well namecalling has allways been a staple in a calm and reasoned debate:) I don't think anyone has claimed what you say. What has been said is that non-combat activities are possible and feasible even with a ruleset that is mostly focuses on combat. Just like becmi, 1e, 2e and 3e. All but...

Change isn't necessarily the same as destroy. Wotc certainly tried to make sure that the new edition can be played without any knowledge of older editions (good), and that it isn't just a copy-paste edition (also good). Changes were made and presumably not just to piss of grognards. The old...

Just because it has a statblock doen't mean it has to be killed. Never did before, and doesn't now in 4e. This argument i can understand, especially if you think of the mm fluff as basis for an implied setting. It also gives another reason they should have ditched the alignment system. You...

Fair enough. Well except for the screwed it up part:) I guess a lot of this comes from the two schools of dnd, one arguing (and rightfully so), that the rules exist for a reason, should make sense and be internally consistent. The other group thinks rules are meant as guidelines, especially...

Not really true is it? they have changed a lot of things, mostly in order to make things more playable and increase their number of possible uses. A generally Unaligned race can function as both a villain or an ally. Why is that a bad thing? World design - makes designing a world easier as you...

Some of this i agree with, some of it i don't. This is what 4e should do, but maybe fails by not being explicit enough. If the stats of red dragons indicate them as being Evil, then i think most DM's will use them as such, without contemplating alternatives and alternative uses of the...