Recent content by T. Foster

Thanks for the link -- just placed an order there :)

That's the same disconnect I'm having (though apparently at least in my case it's because I don't understand what D&D is about and am out to wreck everyone else's fun :erm:). In the classic D&D paradigm the character that's durable but only has so-so offense is the cleric -- best armor, best...

I haven't played 4E, have only briefly skimmed the initial 3 core books and haven't seen anything that's come out since, so I may be completely off-base, but what turns me off about the Roles in 4E is that they all seem to be group-dependant: Defenders' job is to protect the Strikers and...

The plan, as far as I'm aware, is to offer OSRIC in 4 different hardcopy versions (all via Lulu): 1) budget-line softcover on cheap paper, at cost (~$8.50) 2) softcover on nicer paper at a bit of a premium -- the "I like OSRIC so I don't mind throwing a couple extra bucks at the developers to...

Thanks for your kind words. That chapter (to me) is the best part of OSRIC because it takes the existing 1E rules and explains them more clearly and concisely than the actual 1E rulebooks ever did without actually changing them. Of course I may just feel that way because that's the chapter I did...

Voted one, but what that really means is that a third to half the players will have 2-3 drinks apiece while the other half to two-thirds of the players won't drink at all. In college we'd sometimes have players get sloppy drunk, disrupt the session, and eventually pass out over on the couch...

The mention of minis on the box-top is marketing copy (so retailers would know what to do with the game) and the Chainmail references (the Fighting Capability table and movement & ranges being given in inches) are there for backwards compatibility -- to convince fans of the earlier game to give...

This is simply not true of OD&D (meaning specifically the 1974 version). Most racial special abilities (bonus languages, bonus at listening, dwarfs' "contruction" skills (noting slanting passages, shifting walls, etc.), elves' spotting secret doors) are non-combat-oriented, most of the class...

I was about to post the same thing. FWIW, I am dissatisfied with 4E (though perhaps marginally less dissatisfied than I was with 3E/3.5) and I prefer to play barbarians and magic-users (not at the same time, duh!).

We played through this fairly late in our 80s campaign (probably around 1989 -- right before we switched over to 2E). I remember we played through the entire thing in 1 long session, and the players did pretty well (retrieving all 3 items). The thing that actually stands out most in my memory...

The "Alice in Wonderland" and "Skull Island" levels of Greyhawk Castle (i.e. AD&D modules EX1 & 2 and WG6) derive most of their enjoyability out of the players recognizing the source material and reacting appropriately -- not only will the adventures (especially EX1 & 2) make a lot less sense of...

Yeah, the megadungeon ("campaign-dungeon" is an alternative term I tried to introduce that didn't gain much traction -- emphasizing that the nature rather than the size of the dungeon is the important distinction) is a way to "sandboxify" the dungeon concept, blowing up the size and scope of the...

That's not really true, or at least incomplete. Players in Dave Arneson's Twin Cities Blackmoor campaign had ongoing characters with personalities and stories from 1971 (The Great Svenny, Robert the Bald, Marfeldt the Barbarian, Sir Fang, The Blue Rider, Mello the Hobbit, etc.) and the same...

I'm not yet convinced of the need for a 2nd edition with substantial rules changes (instead of just reorganizing and clarifying the rules and updating the art and graphics, in a manner similar to what OSRIC does), much less a 3rd edition, much less a 3.5 edition, much less a 4th...

Ah, but Gary's intention was that the DM would rarely (ideally never) actually look at the rulebook during play, and just have a good enough understanding of the rules and the reasoning behind them and the feel of game they were intended to evoke that he'd be able to make spot-judgment calls...