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Won't urban adventures make supplies a moot resource? Players can just walk a few blocks to pick-up food, or find a warm tavern. Yet, exploration would still be applicable: explore the baron's castle, the sewers, etc; with plenty of exploration encounters: royal garden with thorny vines...

Perhaps TTRPGs will have to capitalize on things unique to that media (which CRPG can't provide): social aspect of friends sitting around a table rules that bend and customize to the group's style player empowerment to go "off the rails" of the script etc...

Don't forget the Trolls (who can be Player Characters) also have a fairy tale vibe: living under bridges and collecting tolls, which plays heavily into their backgrounds.

Great article. Love the reference to Firefly. Indeed, making players WANT to see what's around the next corner is a huge motivator (not just another trapped dungeon room stuffed with monsters).

Later editions removed 'Moral' rules. So if adventurers (players) don't see the monsters running away, they are also loath to use that tactic...

Any plans for a Quick-start?

Will these (pdf's) be available on other sites, like DriveThruRPG ?

Our group is going to make the jump to online sessions. But we play Basic (B/X) D&D. I don't see that ruleset listed/available? Would it be a lot of work to use CoreRPG or MoreCore to accomplish this?

No. The fonts/irregular spacing was difficult to read in some places (personal opinion). Luckily, the book isn't too 'text heavy'.

Thanks for the review: I've been waiting to hear how this game plays! Apart from the art/feel, how are the rules? What is magic like (spell slots? Power Points?). Do the classes distinguish themselves, or do they just add minor bonuses to a specific task?

That sounds great. And I agree that the less 'stuff' you have on your character sheet, the more players have to look for other options (imagination, descriptions, interacting with the world, etc). However, factions (and their alignments), talking to monsters, interaction for gear, etc isn't...

I'm curious (as a B/X fan): how did your 5e players enjoy this older style of game? Did their characters feel "flat" compared to the wealth of options for 5e characters (feats, archetypes, bonus actions, cantrips, etc)? Or was the simplicity/ease/speed enough to make up for that?

This is a great article. Even with 5e we still have the "15-minute workday" and "Nova/Alpha Strike" issues with encounter balance.

I believe it was Professor DM (Dungeon Craft) who said this is a game. As such, anything that lets one player be able to do 'more' on his turn, than other players, is overpowered/unbalanced. For example, the old 3.5e monks with flurry of blows (4-5 attack rolls/turn) while a rogue got 1 attack...

Great insight into 3e game design! I love these articles. In 3e, it was quite common in our group for someone to just take a 1-level dip into the Cleric class, just so they could use a Cure Light Wounds wand, which was used to refresh everyone's HPs between encounters. Half of the party's...

That art looks fantastic.

Having never played the game, how does Smallville's Value/Relationship compare to Pendragon's Personality Traits (positive/negative)? Both seem to represent the character's motives. How do the systems play differently?

The problem with (all editions) of D&D is that it incentivises the "hood" (murder-hobo) behaviour. You get XP for killing things, and gain benefit for "taking their stuff". If, for example, the game only gave you XP for rescuing kittens, and having tea with princesses, you'd see radically...

I really enjoyed the base mechanics of Pendragon (as pointed out in this article). Things like combat, skill checks and even personality traits went smoothly (although we rarely used the latter). However, the "generational" campaign/game quickly lost its "fun factor" with my players: it became...

Our table-top group felt the same way about the original version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It felt like someone just took a table-top rpg and converted every character sheet, power, feat, monster, skill check/encounter, etc into a card. The story-telling aspect of a TTRPG was gone...