Recent content by jeffh

No, and people weren't shy about pointing this out even at the time. (Not a lawyer, just someone who listens to actual lawyers when they talk about IP law, and pointedly ignores randos who don't even understand the difference between copyright and trademark.)

So deal harshly with that, if you feel it's necessary. It doesn't follow that you have to deal equally harshly with the other 95% of the fan works that are/were out there. The stuff you're describing certainly existed (indeed, there's more of it, and more easily accessible, now than there was...

"Companies that fail to defend their trademarks can lose them. Just ask the original makers of cellophane, escalators, and trampolines. However, D&D fans and TSR would debate how much copyright law justified the company’s cease-and-desist notices." AAAARGH! Don't mind me, one of my biggest pet...

In fairness to you, True20, whose best-known implementation is Mutants & Masterminds, attempted this. How well it worked is a matter of some controversy, both online and among people I personally know who've tried it. There definitely do exist people who like it, not sure in what proportion. I...

Never going to be a fan of suggestions for "improving" D&D that are basically "make it not recognizable as D&D anymore", especially in a context like this. There are lots of other games out there that give very different experiences, it's likely you're better off trying one of them than trying...

Well, I like the magic-tech combo, and shorn of some of the cheesier elements it could make a fun game setting.

Just voted after reading the OP but not the rest of the thread. I see the first "leave them alone" option has an absolute majority in a poll where you're allowed to vote twice. That's pretty telling. I'd call this a solution in search of a problem except that no "solution" was actually offered...

No, that's wrong. Half the time you're getting a result from 1-20, and half the time you're getting a result from 21-30. That makes any given result from 21-30 twice as likely to occur (50% divided by 10=5%) as any given result from 1-20 (50% divided by 20 = 2.5%).

I find this mind-boggling, but it explains a lot. At least in this case they have a good excuse, but my experiences with "normal" APs haven't been much better albeit in the opposite direction.

"Elemental" in the phrase Temple of Elemental Evil doesn't, or at least didn't originally, have anything to do with the classical elements, but was meant in the sense of "most basic or fundamental". It was originally a disturbingly crazy death cult dedicated to bringing about the end of the...

I don't know but I too would be interested in this.

The middle option if I absolutely had to choose one, but I'd prefer to leave it as is except for house ruling short rests down from an hour to a deliberately fuzzily defined "few minutes".

There's probably a few things conflated here that shouldn't be. For one thing, "Star Wars" in this context meant something very different in 2004 than it does now.

Is there an estimate on when this will be out? I didn't notice one in the article. Also, is there a good, succinct, preferably free introduction to this apparently-controversial "2d20 system" somewhere? I've heard of it before but know nothing about it, including what makes opinions on it so...

Backing it, but I notice the Kickstarter page doesn't actually seem to mention 5E. Any special reason for that? Just lack of an official license? To what extent is it actually "5E-powered"?