Recent content by fuindordm

Right you are, and the very best RPGs use the system to express the setting and its themes. But those games are not generic and usually don't pretend to be.

I think we have two camps arguing for two aspects of the game that are not actually in conflict. As a fantasy game system capable of supporting a wide variety of setting and homebrew, D&D needs to provide a wide variety of options and very few restrictions. (Personally, I was upset when they...

Roly poly? Barreling down the corridor like an Indiana Jones boulder trap?

One of the things that really impressed me with the Binder is that most of the vestiges avoided common stereotypes and archtypes

I also loved the Binder--my favorite chapter from the Tome of Magic. I think in 5e the Binder is functionally closest to a warlock (no duh!). The main difference being that instead of having a single, consistent patron, the PC could switch between patrons with a long rest, and eventually have...

In one of my campaigns I added a 7th ability score "Luck" that could be used like a d20 proficiency check to resolve whether a random event turned out favorable to the PC, as you would expect, but that PCs could also burn a point from to influence their PC's evolution and destiny by...

In a science fiction setting size might be needed to build ships with frontier capabilities such as warp drive or terraforming.

I think 3e hit the sweet spot for Vancian casting: you don't memorize spells but prepare them ahead of time, so you can cast them quickly in combat, but swapping spells after preparation is relatively rare (e.g. clerics could burn any prepared spell for healing). If I remember right PCs had the...

I have to say the DMG for 2 reasons: 1, it is a smidge closer to being a complete game than the PH; and 2 because it is the book where Gygax truly lets his freak flag fly. It has plenty of problems but it is magical.

Haunting cover!

That was not my intent. I would personally give each race some options to spend feats and/or levels to enhance their racial traits, as a new rules module. But these new abilities need not be entirely unique. One dwarf PC engages with the new rules, the other does not.

In a class-based RPG, you can't fully separate the available classes from the world-building. There simply aren't enough archetypes that are truly generic--any magic-using class immediately adds enormous specificity if only through its spell list. And I believe this is why we have an...

I think you've already earned enough XP from this exercise to go up a level!

If I'm playing D&D as a GAME, then I prefer XP to come mainly from treasure. This is the method that most closely aligns player incentives with their character's incentives, and it specifically de-incentivizes combat as a sport. If I'm playing D&D as a collaborative STORY then I prefer to do...

I liked the 3e paragon classes and iterations around this idea, permitting a player to spend a level on improving their racial abilities. This was a good innovation but it didn't mesh well with 3e-style multiclassing. Something similar could work in 5e, if taking the racial level doesn't cripple...