Recent content by Thomas Shey

Someone who, to simplfy the situation, starts with an extra couple points each of Will, Strength and Constitution isn't "doing anything a nomral person could not have done" but that doesn't make them a normal person; it just means the range of normal people is large enough to overlap the...

I think its more common on the character level than the setting level, partly because the former does not demand everyone else is on board it to the same degree.

I say this with some comfort in my assessment, but admitting I can't prove it: while perhaps not viewing the hobby as a whole, I think your position is significanly more common in the gaming populace than Micah's. It may well have been the inverse when I entered the hobby where a simulationist...

In a certain way, its an extension of immersion from character into setting. They aren't quite the same of course, but come from some of the same urges.

When the suggestion is the published form starting the trend, I think its perfectly relevant to note it well predated that in the wild. Then be offended because you seem to have decided I was making a different point than I was and getting bent out of shape about it.

Think I have to take the other side here. As stated, the men of Numenor are not just a higher social class; the originals are just about literally Homo Superior, and even the diluted descendents are not on the level of normal men, to the degree if you were to write them up in a game system...

It occurs to me--and this could be dead wrong in some people's case--that some of this divide might be related to an old distinction I remember coming up during the r.g.f.a. days that seems to have largely fallen away over the years as far as at least use of the terms, but even, far as I can...

When someone suggests something is a relatively new phenomenon and I very much saw it otherwise, I'm going to say that. If that offends you, so be it.

Might be, but it still existed and didn't seem exactly uncommon. Acting like it was all random sandboxes just does a bad job describing the hobby even then.

The problem has been these always treated a normal hit as enough to deliver poison. As such you pretty much have to assume some damage.

Uhm, that was my point? I was noting that it was pretty overt about it.

From my point of view it doesn't matter much; it was already waaay too far from that to be a good choice from day one. The combination of numerous weird monsters (many well beyond routine troops having a chance against them), plentiful magic items, and erratic but really punch magic (not to...

I'd somehow missed that first part entirely. Learn something every day.

Applies in a slightly more refined way to Eclipse Phase too, for similar reasons.

Well, you know my usual response to that: "You're using D&D why then?" Its been a poor choice for that from the day it came in three little beige books. (Yes, I know, because its easier to find players. Its still pounding nails with a wrench to me).