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Hi, I recently moved to San Francisco and would love to join a friendly group in the city or wider Bay Area. I am mid 30s with most of my gaming experience in D&D Basic/1e/2e, Marvel FASERIP, Star Frontiers, original Whitewolf, Rifts, and Call of Cthulhu in the 90s. I have kept up with...

How does the Justice League do it? Seems like there are two major camps: 1) I want to play a fighter character/archetype that starts off mundane and then becomes a mythic hero (e.g., throw boulders, make demons run from their battle cry) 2) I want a fighter character/archetype that remains...

Double this. Sometimes these forums become too much like U.S. politics -- people on both sides putting up strawman arguments and feeling good about destroying positions that no one really had to begin with! I think all 4e did was to say -- if you put something in front of PCs that should be...

Some things I'd like from themes: 1) create interesting plot hooks by grounding characters in the campaign world 2) be mechanically relevant throughout the life of the character without overshadowing class 3) a good way to model groups of abilities or affliations that are class independant...

Cool, I understand and respect that position. Thanks for having a rational discussion and helping get to the real meat behind the different perspectives. I do believe that this is the main difference in preference. #1 perspective: If you are ok with player agency and player decisions...

See my rationale on page 2. If you take Encounter and Daily powers to represent player agency to declare when the combination of skill and environment makes it possible to do the action, then I think it holds up pretty well. It does assume that the in-game reality that the character is...

Although I know the "that trick only works once on an enemy" rationale it was never the most compelling to me. As other have pointed out, there are too many ways that can break down. I am fine with martial encounter abilities, though. The rationale that works for me is that martial encounter...

Well, I would like to see well thought out non-combat extended contest mechanics. This would be an amazing add from 5e to D&D. I'm not going to defend 4e's Skill Challenges because it is just ok, but at least 4e tried. What would make for good non-combat extended contest mechanics? 1) Must...

I haven't run Zeitgeist yet but from a read through if you generally like both systems, I would suggest 4e. I think Zeitgeist plays to 4e's strengths in that there are actually not that many combats per level. So far, there are really no parts that have strings of combat one after the other...

Level when you feel like it is a good m ethod and one I use in my games a lot. However, XP might be one of those sacred cows of D&D. If so, I'd rather have a system like above that accommodates many different playstyles for new players or those that arent comfortable with level when you want to.

"Our goal is to kill as many things as possible and take their stuff" is a perfectly valid goal under this proposed system. It would then essentially look like your usual XP for defeating monsters system. This method would support many other playstyles as well, though.

Who’s ready to abandon XP for defeating monsters as the XP standard in Next? I hate XP for monsters and XP for treasure is a little better but not by much. I’d like D&D next to outline a number of options for XP including “whenever the DM feels appropriate to the campaign” and have a default...

Great framework OP. Dkyle outlines my perspective pretty well. I like CaW because it encourages player creativity, but not when that creativity: 1) leads to wild deviation from the genre we are collectively aiming for 2) trivializes the character mechanics that are in place to model within the...

Wow, sacred cows and naming conventions really did in the 4e method, even though I think it is pretty good. Imagine a 4e where instead, Hitpoints are called "Heroic Points" and measure your ability to keep fighting baring some intervention (this means all the abstract stuff that hit...

First, I want to want to acknowledge the great work that has gone into Zeitgeist. So far, it is an amazing set of adventures with all the elements lacking in many other published adventures -- fantastic character hooks, npcs, mix of situations (social roleplaying, combat, mystery, etc.), fantasy...

It is a bit muddled, because class is muddled. I think it works best when Themes represent an affiliation to an in-game group or 'profession', often an affiliation that is class independent (although doesn't always have to be). Class then represents an archetype but has no in-game...

Hi, I purchased Strands of FATE a while ago which was my first exposure to FATE. I love the concepts of aspects and especially invoking for effect, but just by reading the rules can't really get a good feel for how it works at the table. Could someone point me to some good examples of real...

I agree with you but the solution is to have a classless system where you can pick the abilities you want. In the context of D&D, which has always been a class based system, I’m not sure how talent trees (groups) limit choices in a class based system. In fact, it seems to promote options...

Basically they broke down what you would normally consider class features / abilities / spell slots etc. into groups of "talents". You could pick new talents every other level from the groups of talents your class or prestige class had access to (usually 3-5 groups). The important...

I love this and was thinking something similar as I thought SAGA did multiclassing the best. I would like to see 2 talents given per level though and just get rid of feats. I’d like talent trees in the following categories at least: 1) Race 2) Class 3) ‘Profession’ broadly defined including...