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I've been doing a lot of puttering with trying to develop systems to do the heavy lifting for me in D&D and most recently that led me to develop a random name generator. So far it only generates town/structure names because they tend to follow a more pronounced pattern but I hope to expand it...

I do something similar. We ignore XP and just end up leveling every few sessions or so. Sometimes we'll "half-level" depending on if we are in the middle of an adventure or if doing so helps the narrative. The trick is to identify the buckets that all characters get when they level up and try...

A while ago I developed a system to try and help understand the tradeoffs inherent in 4e weapons. The system was discussed in this thread. It got me thinking in general about how weapons work and playing around with different options. I decided to see what would happen if weapon training (i.e...

In our earlier teenage days there was perpetual intra-PC conflict due to real world conflict. It was fun but pretty much ensured no "campaign" could ever endure. Now days I actually strive to insert that sort of conflict but over in-game or plot reasons. I find that players and PCs will always...

I recently started experimenting with making maps in PowerPoint. The plus side is that you aren't locked into a style (like you are with a mapping program) because you can make whatever you want and PowerPoint is vector-ish enough that you can scale and change freely. The downside is that it...

When I DM I don't pull punches but I will go out of my way to make sure the game can keep on going if people want it to. Making 'em laugh helps in that regard. So I need your help, ENWorld. I need your snark to buff up the list!

It is coriander in beer and cilantro in dishes. We are only different to protect the sanctity of beer.

I'm a big fan of making the world relevant to the adventure at hand but it took me a while to figure out that while I could encourage it, I couldn't force it. If you make it too relevant you end up pushing out players who can't (or aren't willing) to commit your material to memory. People can...

I think it depends on the manner in which they don't know the rules. If they are trying to use the normal rules and just aren't familiar enough that it slows the game, I think a quick chat that you'd like people to put effort into knowing their characters will be sufficient. It will still take...

Like what? I don't really need specific examples (although they can be helpfully illustrative). I'm interested at the general level of what sort of scenarios you like that are highly detailed but not detailed in certain areas.

I like a setting that provides me with easily adaptable material and stuff that I can't do on my own. An example of easily adaptable material would be a well done organization that isn't necessarily geographically tied down so I can put them anywhere without having to concoct a reason why but...

I did not intend for it to be limited to D&D but that is the RPG I am the most familiar with so it will inevitably be more applicable of D&D than anything else. The article actually has almost nothing in common for this thread but for its, as Umbran pointed out, sensationalist hook, so I'm...

Definitely. Late 2e was exceptionally bloated. I just picked the 3e to Essentials progression because it is a chunk of game system design time that people are largely familiar with. I think I agree with pretty much everything else you said and found it to be useful nuance.

So long as everyone in the party min-maxes (or aims for sub-par) to the same extent this is true. The problem becomes when two or more players become so disparate in terms of power that they cannot both be effectively challenged at the same time. Then the DM is forced to either treat the players...

Yeah, I’m going to have to concede that point. In re-reading it I didn’t deliver on the hook. But I think it is a big threat for two reasons: (1) Modern game design *is* different than older game design because the RPG industry has become more of an industry. This isn’t to say that RPG sales...

Whenever I stumble across stuff like old botany texts or similar I try and save as many as possible. The "feel" of botany art is perfect for D&D and always perks up the creepy necromancer's laboratory.

I got my first feedback on the game (evidently it doesn't take long for a TPK to crop up) and the response was generally positive. Main critique was that there might actually be too many levels which is sort of humorous for a two page game. I sort of feel locked in to Dante's Inferno as a model...

I am surprised at how many of the things people envy are specific rules. By specific rules, I mean rules that applied in a limited set of scenarios such as a particular class or a particular feat or a particular subset of the game. Why do you feel that these elements could not be ported directly...

This is similar to where I was heading in my comment above but better described. Basically, players are piggy-backing on real world clues to solve in-game puzzles. On some level this is gamist, but part of the reason that they need to rely on real world clues is that the players don't have as...

I do want to do so. People only consider new material if it is attractive material. The easiest way to make it attractive is to make it more powerful than the stuff that already exists. This makes that other stuff obsolete. Over time, this obsolescence makes entire monster manuals and character...