Recent content by Umbran

All the parties involved were fictional, and the measurements were done to support a narrative, not to establish objective reality.

Mr. Machiavelli will see you now...

Well, the "we" here is not well-defined, but that's a bit stronger than what I am saying. My point is that it would be more accurate to say "we" are not the ONLY target customer, for most values of "we" you care to consider. D&D does not have a single, well-defined, target demographic it aims...

If by "solution" you mean, "thing that will get D&D consigned to irrelevance quickly", then sure, I guess.

I am not sure if you are referring to "the hobby" in terms of other games, or in terms of people. Nor do I know what you mean by being "intertwined". Though, to be clear, with some short-term exceptions, all indications I know of are that D&D has always been the lion's share of the hobby...

You don't suggest this was done in some moment of desperate need, or a hard choice made between unsavory alternatives. No justification is present that would mitigate how bad this looks, or that it was even a one-off. It is presented as a premeditated act of enslavement through deceit, to...

With respect, I don't think we, the gaming public, have anything like a coherent picture of why 4e was rejected. Everyone has suppositions, which coincidentally tend to align with how 4e violated their personal play preferences. If you have solid data supporting that, I'd like to see it.

Who among us really wants to put forth that our prsonal observations represents "the hobby as a whole" in any real way? Hm? My experience back in the AD&D era wasn't sim. Nobody I knew played sim. We were 12 - 18, and wouldn't know "sim" if someone slapped it in our faces like a dead fish.

I think there may be a sense that development of the game used to be more "in tune" with the players in the past. There's a ton of possible reasons for us to have that impression, whether or not that impression is true, mind you.

No, because Aulë created seven Fathers of the Dwarves. (I also note this diversion into Tolkien is off topic - the point I was trying to make was that a game in which all the characters are special isn't necessarily all that weird. If the Fellowship of the Ring worked for you, then it doesn't...

The current nomenclature still works. If the rules are built for in person play (presumably at a table), it is a ttrpg. If you play that game online, that's an example of online play. If you play with electronic support, it is electronically supported play of a ttrpg. Until you get a game that...

The Numenoreans were so exceptional, they lived for centuries. They were potent enough to fight side-by-side with the first, most powerful of the elves, against Sauron's Boss, Morgoth, in the war that banished Morgoth to the Void. For their efforts and suffering, the "angels" of Middle Earth...

Sam, actually, is also exceptional. He's not of royal bloodline, but he's also not one of those dirty urban people. Tolkien has a definite bent toward bucolicism.

1) The question isn't when the first event happened, but how common it was in published form. 2) I am not offended by you claiming to haver seen it. I am offended by you strawmanning me to my face.