Recent content by Katemare

Thank you very much, I've read all your replies with great interest! So, in the end, early RPG community was much like the present one: it was different. It consisted neither of dungeon crawlers nor pure role-players. Nice to know %) I often hear one or the other presumption from modern-day...

S'mon, Stormonu, thank you, it's very interesting and makes things much clearer! So, I guess that community was one of the decisive factors in RPGs' rise to popularity, but competitiveness - only at first, and groups/clubs tended to have own traditions. More accounts are welcome %)

Well, you've missed your chance when I visited Brooklyn, NY, this spring %) Too bad, I was really looking to meet the RPG crowd. Though I plan to visit every year or so. Anyone else to share your account of early RPG clubs? You can still end the holywar across the globe %)

Glyfair, Wombat, thank you, it's very interesting %) For Russia and CIS, RPGs begun in 90s, and even with present widespread Internet access, it's hard to reconstruct what happened across the ocean some 40 years ago.

I know this forum sees many old-time gamers. I have a question for them which is very interesting for me and the Russian RPG community as whole. What were early gaming clubs like? I can't find much info about it, only a few posts which don't go into details. Both personal accounts and weblinks...

AllisterH, thanks, that helped!

(Long time no see, eh...) I wonder, what is the status of tabletop RPG industry? Does it grow or shrink? Are best-selling games getting simpler or crunchier? Do unusual games sell better or worse than in previous years? In this thread, I'm interested in statistics and trends of commercial RPG...

As far as I know, D&D always had lots of furry stuff. Personally, I love intelligent animals, they feel mythic and folklore. Haven't used a giant lynx - yet. There are not many player who can perceive a big talking lynx on par with dragons and trolls.

There is a nice third-party booklet about an animal-headed race: Remarkable Races - Anumus. They are companion animals that were given new life via magical substance. Fluff is done really well, pictures are inspiring, and mechanics looks fine (although I'm not expert on 4E mechanics). The fluff...

It's always a great sensation of wonder for me when people see things radically different than I do. If I played in the scene from this example, then the events, my clever decisions and the opponent's cunning would glow brightly in my memory due to vivid feel of participation at the time of...

There was a talk in The Game for Non-Gamers thread about social encounters. One of examples given was like this: Recently I stumbled upon better instance of social mechanics - in Example of Play for Beast Hunters RPG (which is also available free is SRD form, in which they polished some of...

Good point. There is an alternative rule to roll DP instead of treating them like a pool, but this means more rolls, more luck (and less book-keeping). If I recall correctly, some effects in D&D only start dealing lethal damage once your subdual damage equals HP; this is something of sorts...

Skills are nested and count by die ranks (Melee d10 > Swords d4, for example). For an attack, you roll your skill (whole related branch), and the sum of the roll is harm value. This value you try to defend against. Well, this probably means that every attack is successful, since unless it...

Yeah, the target's player says "I parry", or "I run", or something. And you say "the giant sting crushes your shield and scratches your armor" (Reflect DP is depleted to zero, and armor took the rest of the hit). There is only one attack roll incorporating both to-hit and damage, and only...

I noticed some discussions of abstract HP nature lately. This made me thinking... There are other ways to represent character's resilience in RPGs: health levels, separate pools, endurance roll... There is one HP system I like very much: Eldritch RPG's. Characters have Active Defense Pools...