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Actually, "To Serve Man" was based on a short story by Damon Knight. It's also the name of an actual gag cookbook (by Karl Wulf) with such recipes as Chilli con Hombre and Mannerschnitzel...

The incantations from Urban Arcana (found here) are also worth looking at, although their system seems to be as related to Epic Spellcasting as much as it is to Unearthed Arcana's incantations.

(I know you asked iwatt this, but I'll throw my two cents in. I'm like that.) In general, how frequently or easily you give out conviction is part of how "cinematic" your game is, and to a large extent is part of the setting (for example, Nevermore, which is a fairytale/dreamlands setting...

Well, I don't think tabletop RPGs are workable without a fair bit of communication, anyway. Mind you, I could see an argument that since human beings are not, in general, very good at communication in the first place, adding anything else to communicate is perhaps an unnecessary and undesirable...

I don't really think things can be separated out so neatly. After all, (aside from when using pre-generated characters), the player chose the virtue and vice for their PC. Presumably they had some view of what they meant for the character. If both the GM and the player make a good faith...

But everything with any self-awareness potentially does. It is merely that since absolutely everything else in the game that the GM can do can also modify or affect the player's behavior, I don't see any particular problem with one more mechanism, particularly if the GM uses it with restraint...

As far as I can tell, FATE does nothing to reduce the power of the GM -- it simply makes it a bit more obvious if they are being arbitrary. That said, SotC has really excellent advice for the GM. Now this would be a very good thing for True20 to borrow from FATE -- the current rules for nature...

Given that the GM represents the entire game universe, unless just about everything is reduced to die rolls, they are going to have to make large amounts of judgement calls about how the character's actions are going to be interpreted and reacted to, anyway. There are some players and GMs out...

FATE would have the same issues that Thomas5251212 is complaining about, in spades, since aspects are arguably FATE's core mechanism. Every time a user invokes or tags an aspect, the GM has to rule if it is appropriate to the situation or not (from the SotC SRD: "The GM is the final arbiter of...

And for the traditional (and well-nigh required) question: are there any plans for a print edition?

Spirit of the Century. It's a pulp RPG using the FATE system (which in turn is a development of the FUDGE system). FATE has a website at http://www.faterpg.com. It's a sort of rules light system (can something with a 400+ page rulebook really be called "rules light"?) based around a single...

But even in FATE it often comes down to the GM's call: IMO, FATE doesn't so much remove GM arbitrariness from character nature as provide a clean and above board mechanism for it. (Mind you, this is a real valuable contribution and I suspect FATE's aspect mechanism is going to strongly color...

It is, however, a reasonably complete answer to the question the original poster asked. What you want seems to be the answer to the question you think they should have asked instead. I do not disagree that your question is likely to produce more useful responses. Myself, I've played in the...

We all died, so I recall. I ate the city -- needed ketchup. Ten marched in, three crawled out. Darn! We need a new universe!

Except, there's no mention of wings in the description in the book: Eddison, I believe, knew his mythology.

I'm pretty sure I remember playing naval minatures in the early 70's that had critical hit tables for such relatively rare events as engine and magazine hits. And at least in my neck of the woods, a lot of the early D&D players were also wargamers of various stripes, so the idea would have...

I'm afraid I am, given as the class was my fault (I have an excuse! I was in junior high school at the time I came up with the first version). It was a looong time ago, but I do remember bits of what I did and what inspired me.

The name of the Illusionist class came, alas, from Lin Carter's Warrior of the World's End, but the class abilities were mostly just made up from whole cloth. One exception is the Phantasmal Killer spell, which was taken from E. E. "Doc" Smith's Second Stage Lensmen, in the scene where Kimball...

Let's see, Fireball just translates to a Widened Elemental Blast (Fire). You use the power, the targets make a Reflex save for 1/2, then a damage save. Finally the Adept makes a fatigue save and records a -1 to fatigue saves for the next hour. This is opposed to D&D where you roll the damage...

DnDChick (known there as True20Chick) posted bunches of information about her True20 Skull & Bones campaign on the True20 boards -- here and here are good starting places to look.