Recent content by Lord Rasputin

I'm going to give GURPS 5e a 50/50 chance of coming out in 2024, in September if it does. So that's my nomination.

Six years ago, a friend of mine lost his leg to diabetes and had to live in a retirement home. He was 60, so much younger than most of the other people in there. We gamed in the common areas of the old folks home. At one point, the party was getting back to town and was trying to get lodgings...

What the heck is wrong with GURPS Underground Adventures? (That's the closest to a real title for GURPS Caves.) Quit this sniping

Quoth Dorothy Parker, "Who could tell?"

I'm willing to bet this is a survey of players who are playing 5e, rather than any version of D&D. There's a good question as to what actually counts as D&D anymore, given the proliferation of retroclones and the existence of Pathfinder. But from WotC's standpoint, it needs to count the customer...

These and only these. I'm pro-"players roll all the dice," however, so spell attacks in 6 (though not reducing the number of saves) are good with me. I'm down with reviving confirmation rolls for critical hits, which was in 3e. Without them, the game is too swingy towards the monsters.

By contrast, I thought this many times. It's a big reason I don't like the Forgotten Realms: you don't have to include everything. In fact, you shouldn't.

That they didn't use hobbits doesn't mean they didn't have a niche. I was at a talk Weis gave at a convention about 30 years ago, and they made kender to fill that niche, much as draconians filled the orc niche. Weis said she based Tasslehoff on a child in an old movie, I think Meet Me in St. Louis.

The aggregate sales figures are all a little misleading as to a setting's scope. As in, notice how almost all of these have a drop-off for each successive edition. What's happening is that TSR was selling the revised editions to same crowd who already had bought the original version. Also, note...

Depends on whether or not you define what is described in the essay as "fun." A lot of us don't.

What the others have said: The maps are just great. Seriously, the top two levels are a model of how maps should be in a module: multiple paths, a hidden secret exit, multiple bonus areas, a constant sense of wonder. Multiple factions. It’s always possible in those scenarios to befriend one...

Kobolds are a good choice to pull off these pacts. A lair of kobolds in 1e is worth under 5,000 xp on average. That's for 255 kobolds, including leaders, so you have a lot of mindless combat to get those xp, without much treasure in that, only about 2,500 gp. You can use those kobolds to get...

Aside from the tacky idea of Vancian casting based on spells on a Palm Pilot, a clever game, based on the best version of D&D, 3.xe.

While this is certainly true now and has been ever since 3e came out, this wasn't true beforehand. It was very common to use material from one edition with another. I distinctly remember once running a 2e game with my 1e Fiend Folio by my side (I used tabaxis, and sang the tabaxi theme song to...

I can only imagine the sheer horror she felt when she first tried to look through the TSR finances.