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They had the week off but so far so good for Rutgers in the Big East. R.U., Rah, Rah; R.U., Rah, Rah, Whoo-Rah, Whoo-Rah; Rutgers Rah Up Stream Red Team Red Team Up Stream Rah, Rah, Rutgers Rah

That's useful to know, and not entirely unexpected. They should at least make sure that their software works with WINE and related products. That would help them cover the Linux world, too.

A player's character and an NPC are sitting on the roof of a tall building, watching the sun set. Taken by the moment, the NPC throws herself into the PC's arms and says, "Catch me, you fool!" It's a percentile system and the GM tells the player to make a DFU ("Don't Foul Up") Roll to catch...

I got Basic D&D (the Blue Book version) because I asked for it after seeing a Gary Gygax interview in People Magazine in the late 1970s. I learned from the books rather than being taught by someone else.

Minoan Thera.

Well, I was specifically trying to keep the bit about the players having absolutely nothing in unfamiliar territory to see how the PCs would behave without their equipment to rely on. I thought that would be an interesting and different experience I was really happy with how that worked out...

I ran a campaign recently that was adapted from the Slave Lords modules (I created my own maps and encounters loosely based on the themes and monsters presented in the modules) and one of the hardest parts was figuring out what to do with that deus ex machina capture of the party. I wanted to...

Yes. D&D, via hit points, also dramatically undervalues armor of all sorts. Why? Because D&D is designed to reflect fantasy movies and fiction, not reality. Movies are full of people who fight without helmets, shields, or, heck, even in chainmail bikinis or loin cloths. Realistic? No...

The most important is complex social interaction between the PCs and a bottomless pool of NPCs. Less important is that fact that so long as you have a good GM, you can never hit the boundaries of what's been programmed for. Speed of combat resolution. Pretty graphics.

It all balances out. In the US, we also don't pay for local calls. They do in a lot of other countries, thus calling an ISP with a modem cost people money and delayed widespread Internet in a lot of countries while dial-up ISPs were booming in the US because of free local calls. A lot of...

They also wanted to get out of the module and adventure business. Given that Necromancer, Goodman Games, and others have stepped in there and WotC has been able to avoid putting out a constant stream of adventures, I think that part of the idea has been fairly successful.

I seriously asked S. John Ross how much he'd want to write a short article about his 5 elements of a commercial successful RPG setting to put on the web. Alas, the price he semi-seriously asked for was unreasonably high (because he's not really interested in writing it). But I do think there...

Hypertext SRD because it allows me to quickly cross-reference terms and words that I'm uncertain of. I think it's so useful that I paid to subscribe, even though I know how to scrape the site myself to create a local copy.

With respect to role-playing? Buy the license for The Fantasy Trip/In The Labrynth and give it to Steve Jackson. Buy the license for Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games and give it to S. John Ross. Ask S. John Ross to write an article on his five elements of a commercially successful...

Ryan Dancey said, "So we've seen a move towards games that are mechanically distinct, and a move towards consolidating a lot of "genre" options (without a rational for mechanical distinctiveness) into D20. That's exactly what I thought would happen, and I think that trend will only continue...

I think the difference can only be understood looking at how decisions are made. First, if the GM puts a 20 foot chasm in the setting for the purpose of providing a specific level of challenge (as opposed to putting it there for setting-based or incidental reasons), then there won't be much...

In my own anecdotal experience, that's not the case. In my experience, rule-light vs. rule-heavy has to do with the style of the participants, the length of the game, and the detail level of the game. Certain styles, campaign lengths, and detail levels seem to be better suited by one or the...

The complexity is what makes interacting with NPCs less of an issue for many people. Yes, a pit is a pit and you jump it or you don't but people have very rigid opinions (based on real world experience, guesses, or genre expectations) about how wide of a pit a person should be able to jump or...

FYI, the scope of my anecdotal claim was "often". If I qualified everything I said with "in my opinion", "in my experience", or "I think", the size of my posts would be even large and I've already received complaints that I'm writing novels. I suppose I should also mention that I was talking...

Well, doing so actually seems to be helping clarifying things. Sure, no problem. I disagree that the rules simply provide "psychological comfort" and simply hide differences in the AOR. In my experience, a group can use the rules do define the AOR and the more comprehensive the rules, the...