Recent content by Merlin the Tuna

Yep. In 4E terms, it basically amounts to making the maximum attainable level 10 (or possibly 11 if you want to give folks just a tiny taste of paragon paths) and letting players take feats or additional lower-level powers beyond that. I haven't gone whole hog on the idea, but my last 4E...

That was pretty much our take as well. Especially since we're spending a lot more time on Real Adult Stuff these days, the desire to spend $100 and 900 pages on an incremental adjustment to 3.5E is just not there. Having branched off into a lot of lighter, quicker, cheaper, and frankly more...

Best GM advice I've ever seen has been the GM rules for Dungeon World. I'm madly in love with the system as a whole, but even if it doesn't ultimately scratch your personal RPG itch, the rules-light-ness of it makes it easy to port the principles to other systems.

I'm working off of Basic v0.2 and forum info (I haven't purchased any 5e books), but from all indications I've seen, this Fighter should never have seen print. I don't even care whether the math behind his attacks and defenses are good. You don't present the game as being made up of 3 pillars...

Disclaimer: I'm basing this off of my experience with the final playtest rather than the PHB (which I don't have). But that Monk was tightly constrained in terms of Ki points, and short rests being lunch breaks rather than breathers really exacerbates the problem. To wit, at 8th level, I had 4...

You're likely right that Paizo & WotC aren't saying prayers that the other company crashes and burns. But the "competition makes things better" refrain is oversimplifying the situation and leads to dubious conclusions like "everybody wins if WotC & Paizo win." In terms of what I think will...

That's some data, but "useful" is dubious. By the same logic, I can point out that the Google+ community for Fate Core has 20% more members and 3x as many posts compared to the Pathfinder one. I'd be certifiably crazy to assert that that's "useful data" in depicting that Fate is crushing...

That's not really accurate, nor do I see how it could be accurate. Combat in Fire Emblem is different from combat in Super Robot Wars, is different from combat in XCOM, is different from combat in Final Fantasy Tactics, and so on and so forth. That's still totally independent of what we're...

It is now, but it somehow managed to earn literally thousands of furious posts in its prime. Anecdote! I've only loosely been following 5E - I was pretty turned off by the first couple playtest packets, but I've checked in occasionally to keep an eye out for any interesting developments. In...

I'll probably download the Basic Set at some point with the expectation that I'll get roped into a one-shot at some point, but no, I won't be buying. I just don't see anything that the game is notably good at doing. If I want a heavy roleplaying experience, I'll grab something like FATE...

As a player, I have no interest in running around with a stack of DMPCs. As a DM, I have no interest in managing a stack of DMPCs that the PCs have recruited. A (single) temporary tagalong is fine and not at all uncommon, but our playstyle -- and I suspect a fair percentage of folks' --...

The biggest issue I'd highlight here is the potential goofiness in the narrative. Adding a PC to the group is generally hard to justify in-game -- a good friend and partner has just died, so you go to the local pub/guardhouse/bounty hall and recruit someone roughly similar? And only one person...

My group quit keeping up with the current state of D&D when WotC started pushing out Essentials material, so we've felt like we're playing an "old edition" for a while. We've been pretty big fans of 4E even as we whine about its shortcomings to each other, so 5E is barely on our radar. There...

Yep. I thought that the original EQ did it, but Google is only giving me hits on EQ2 implementing the /pizza command. Everquest -- now with pizza - Boing Boing

Do they? I feel like the defining visuals for the Avenger are that they're melee combatants without armor, and that they all wield anime-sized weapons. The first of those fits the concept perfectly, and the second one pretty much poops all over it. As for the runepriest, I'm currently DMing one...