Recent content by Parmandur

Right, that is why magic was handled the way it was in OD&D and AD&D: lots of difficulties and limitations. Like large artillery pieces in late Medieval times. That's part of why I say it probably does not matter for modern D&D much, with how much easier magic is to access and use.

No, they aren't meat points, though in the naval war game Gygax cribbed fit the rules they are the meat points of a ship. It's an abstraction to allow for quick resolution of combat. Thing is, it is a mathematical abstraction thst breaks down at a certain point...that point is gunpowder. But...

Fair point, but firearms do change the way warfare and fighting are conducted on a fundamental level: it is a singularity event, and it isn't possible to have a quick and dirty system that keeps sword and plate on the same plane as musketeers.

Thing is, and Gygax the historical warfare wink and hardcore war gamer knew this, even early firearms are a mathematical singularity that wrecks the HP/ACrough and ready abstraction. I don't know if that really matters so much in current D&D, which is more of a balanced game situation aiming at...

Guns did not fit in OD&D or AD&D because even though the rules, for a war game, are fast and loose and abstract...they work on a mathematical curve that worked for a certain range of possibilities. Firearms change the math too much to work as a Gygax Ian fast and loose war game, and the AC/HP...

72,000 people we to GenCon last year, which is a small drop in the bucket of people involved with RPGs (upwards of 13 million D&D Beyond users, last I checked), and being a for-pay convention by definition self-selected and skewed as a sample. I seriously doubt anyone has better information on...

Yeah, WotC has probably the best idea.

Kind of all one thing, yeah.

Specifically, very much so, but also generally other Anderson work is also pretty clearly something everyone in the early RPG scene was reading in the 70s/80s. Underrated influence.

Other than all the published examples in actual Adventure books...? A 6-8 room Dungeon without the opportunity for a long rest is pretty easy to accomplish, and official published examples are trivial to point to since WotC has repent a decade putting them out. Not every session has to be part...

Thanks for clarifying, I agree with all that. Even with an explicitly generic system, Plotweaver, Johnny O'Neal of Brotherwise recently said on BlueSky that they don't expect it to be usable for any genre or style, just to create a big tent that allows a variety of tech or magic levels to...

No, what @TwoSix seems to me to be saying is that 5E or BitD can be engineered to other modes, same as GURPS or Savage Worlds, and being supposedly "generic" is somewhat marketing. I am not sure thst I fully agree fully, but it is true that 5E has been successfully adapted to a large number of...

I'd say it is less presentation, and more about conscious design. Take the Plotweaver system Brotherwise Games is using for the Cosmere games. By design, they are making it so that you can take an element from any Setting fir the game, and use it with another, so putting a Mistborn in a Space...

They...have done a lot of handpainted covers in the past decade? Specifically Tyler Jacobson covers. They also put out a ton of Magic cards that are canvas paintings. This is from one of the Forgotten Realms Magic cards, but on this page you can see him posing with one of his paintings on...

I think that example rather proves their point, people have used 3E and 5E for just about every genre and Setting.