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The trick to DDI is to get a 1 month subscription to get all the updated material and renew it every 4 months or so. You basically save 1/2 of what you would have paid on a year subscription while still getting all the updated material. 4E is playable with the PHB. Obviously your mileage may...

Rituals are basically the lazy man's way of handling things. You have the gold, you have the time, but you don't feel like doing it yourself so you let magic handle it. Some make life convenient, others create things, but most of the time they aren't necessary. The cost and limitations is...

I really don't understand the scramble to achieve "balance" in a system is. We're talking about an RPG here, not a player-vs-player game. If D&D were indeed a board game like Monopoly then certainly I expect balance. I'd be pretty pissed if the car got to roll 4d6 every turn but the thimble...

Hopefully it'll be better than the DS game which nails the atmosphere but is ridiculously hard for any character that isn't a heavily armored warrior. And I beat most of the Might and Magic and Wizardry games, so I know hard.

Hopefully it'll be better than the DS game which nails the atmosphere but is ridiculously hard for any character that isn't a heavily armored warrior. And I beat most of the Might and Magic and Wizardry games, so I know hard.

I regulate absent characters to the background and they help fight, but I just never liked the concept of them disappearing. A buddy of mine told a story about a DM that had a detailed excuse made up where characters were summoned to other planes or swallowed by a red mist. Eventually he got...

This this and this some more. I've always hated the concept of a player not showing up to the game and his character mysteriously disappearing in a shroud of mist or being called away on a quest. No. Your character becomes an NPC and the DM controls him based on how you roleplayed him. If...

Okay, I see this argument way predates my joining. Loaded words like "The players aren't expected to find everything" may or may not be true given the party's tenacity and propensity to search, but I definitely won't say anything Gygax wrote just gave away free junk. Usually free treasure in...

Story control the players is exactly what makes it different. I've only played a few RPGs (Dogs in the Vineyard and, ahem, "Maid the RPG" being two examples) that give the players as much control over the plot as the GM. In the standard RPG the player states an action and the GM describes the...

Holy crap, this whole guarded/hidden/trapped conversation is absolutely ridiculous. If you want to be super literal then no, there's no such thing as an unguarded/unhidden/untrapped treasure because there'll always be some roadblock to getting it. Considering every module involves aspects of...

D&D (with the ampersand) is explicitly trademarked therefor it's safe to assume AD&D is. While writing my retro-clone, I expressly avoid the mention of anything that directly refers to the old game going so far as to call the product I'm basing it off of "Zeb Cook's 2nd Edition Ruleset" and the...

Playing a game at a convention means there'll be more dice rolling than normal which can be good or bad based on the system. I can't deny it requires an equal amount of work from everyone at the table (as Novem5er illuminated) and it's a system I probably couldn't play at a convention or...

Glad to see you had a blast. I wish they would come out with an expansion to the game. The comic is still ongoing so maybe there'll be some future supplements.

By the rules? A lot. Basic doesn't have rules for environmental movement, you're limited to level 3 (or was it 4? I'm going off the top of my head). Elf, dwarf, and halfling were classes. Ability scores had fewer modifiers. It's easier to say what Basic does have as opposed to doesn't in...

Ever since I got a Sony Ereader the thing pretty much stays in my pocket 24/7. As much as I love dead tree, I can't be arsed to carry around tons of books and I usually find myself on a train, bus, or plane almost every week. The reason why the print is so small is because of the format. I...

I don't see the big confusion regarding the old treasure charts. You determined what the party would be fighting, rolled to see what kind of treasure they might have, then listed it as a horde on some scrap paper. Animals don't carry treasure but they clean out their dens which contain the...

It's better to have a strong foundation and build upon it. One of my complaints with 3E was the multitude of subsystems that didn't work properly and a plethora of later material that tried building on that weak foundation. You listed more material you liked with 2E than you did with 4E so it...

As opposed to a rollplaying game. And I don't mean that as a pejorative, I mean to say that Mouse Guard differs from other games in that rolling dice isn't that important. Mouse Guard's mechanics are a means to an end. Failure is a minor setback (you lose a fight, you slump away with a...

Oh, there's a 2E retro clone in progress and it's about 50% complete. It started around the end of November and is progressing rather rapidly. There's still some inconsistencies to be wrapped up but it's mostly playable as is. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the creator ;)

Some people have trouble adapting to Burning Wheel because it requires equal participation between player and GM. The players have just as much pull in the flow of events as the GM does dictating them. The basic concept of Mouse Guard is Step 1: GM describes problem Step 2: Players dictate...