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I tend to agree but the use of white space is a hot topic in the RPG design space.. I'd says avoid the miniscule gutters and margins of old TSR adventures as well. You need a margin of more then .3 inches or whatever - especially between columns. I've had complaints about 10 or 11 point text...

A) If you want to make something with a layout - Affinity is around $50 or far less on sale. B) I would find 100% free fonts rather then paid fonts or fonts with "for personal use" conditions - or buy fonts, that is also a thing you could do. C) Consider using a 11 or 12 point font with at...

I enjoyed this panel as well - didn't agree with everything, but it's nice to see people who actually make interesting stuff talking about their work.

I see no reason why you cannot carve out parts of a work with different licenses ... including CC licenses as long as it's clear. You can say things like "The text of this work is released under a CC 0 license, but artist, author or creator reserve and retain all rights to any and all...

Ah, yes, that's where we differ. I am sure there are fans who want a universal RPG perfectly fit for market forces, a sort of fast food of game design. I don't fall into that camp. I want to see RPGs that do interesting and things and play smoothly, designed with imagination and passion both...

Yop - that was the point I was making... Ghost rules lurk in the rules being spooky and confusing, designers should exorcise them and own the play style they want to bring to the table. It helps newcomers and it helps calm edition wars because the game says "I do this, not that". Now of course...

I do understand that ... I think that A) WotC wasn't clear enough about their goals (though 3.5 started the trend and birthed a negative reaction as well) and B) the fan base shouldn't have crucified for it. C) WotC should have rebranded 4E as "D&D tactics" and keep the line going.

As someone who was part of the OSR starter in in 2011 ... frankly there's a lot of jackasses using the label. The best of OSR design is exactly as you say, and this has carried on into many Post-OSR communities where people are just excited to make things and help others make things. There was...

Of course ... the right referee can make most anything work .... but that doesn't get to what I'm talking about here - 1) I think a high level of design complexity without clear instructions is both messy for old hands like us, and too nuanced/confusing for people who are new to the hobby. 2) A...

I think that's the core of it - but I wish people were comfortable acknowledging that it's just not the same game. 4E, 5E, and 1E D&D are designed to create different play experiences. If I was a big 5E player and a new edition comes out that wants to be a grid based tactics game for skirmish...

I think it goes well beyond aesthetics within game books - and often has a political aspect - the endless thread here about the Demon Type 5 looking less "cheesesnake" is an example ... but that's not the part that irks me. What I find frustrating is the way there's a conservatism about rules...

Rumors aren't about ensuring the party explores everything, they are about quickly providing opportunities/options to the party. A magic sword may or may not be interesting to your players, but if you are committed to running an open world that's their decision to make. It doesn't matter if...

This is true - though I think it depends on what one defines as "Old School" - I'm of the "The OSR was a new approach to RPG design" gang though, not the "The OSR recovered the CORE MAGICAL TRUTH of D&D!" gang. Giants and Drow are especially interesting as they are I think the best examples of...

This still reads to me like a misunderstanding of how OSR type games are played (or at least how I play them). 1st - The level two party can choose to go to level 8 (or a location that has level 8 type creatures), but if there's a "level 8 creature" (Say a mature red dragon) in a room on...

I don't love OSRsimulacrum's take on the totality of the OSR, and I'm not convinced by Lich Van Winkel's either, though both seem to be smart fellows and I consider Van Winkel a friend... I think any take on the OSR tends to focus too much on the part the author themselves is most familiar with...

It makes sense to me - but only in the context of play style. One of the difficulties in discussing "D&D", especially in a community like EN-World which skews towards newer editions, is the tendency to lump all the editions of D&D's together, when different editions clearly seem to encourage...

There are other concepts of balance in even the oldest systems, and many of these have made their way into OSR and Post-OSR design. The major one is "Level Based Balance". What this means here is that dungeon level (originally literally and often exactly) corresponds to PC level. So a level 1...

I'm not one to defend some of Gygax's more irksome advice or every design decision made in 1974 - 1985 ... but what you're focusing on it the worst aspects of early design ... and presumably if you're not over 60, kids playing D&D. I had those same experiences in the 1980's. 12 year olds aren't...

Seems like you've had some bad experiences with OSR play styles or dungeon crawls. You're providing a list of common complaints that people familiar with more modern games sometimes make about OSR style play or older editions. The issue is that to the degree these exist, the community that...

NSR is one fragment of the post-OSR. In as far as it's a style of design, it's not my own, but I respect what people are doing in the space, and I appreciate that the NSR community (because it's still more a community then a design style) are one of the various groups/scenes making claims to the...