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I'm on the cusp between Master and Grandmaster, but I've always considered the "real" grognards to be those who were serious wargamers/miniatures players before D&D. The SPI fans. I don't think I matter anymore, as I haven't bought new stuff since the 3.5e days. A few retro-things, yes, mostly...

Crunchy rules have both advantages and drawbacks. Light rules requiring lots of freeform GM interpretation (or even player decision) have both advantages and drawbacks. Different GMs, players, and groups will prefer different combinations of crunch and freeform as their personal optimum. My...

Not a paradox. Just because a thing has been done doesn't mean that it has been done well. "I can do better than that" may often be false, but it's sometimes true, you can't tell until you try, and trying is not a paradox.

"What is this 'Fifth Edition' of which you speak?" I still run a D&D game because the RPG Police haven't shown up to seize my 3.5e stuff, because I could find players, and because I managed to start a long-running "Brotherhood of Rangers" campaign under 3.5e that has caught fire with the...

I'd do the same in another 3.5e game. In the "Brotherhood of Rangers" game I am trying to keep house rules down to a dull roar, so core feats remain unchanged, while I turn non-core feats into homebrew versions that finesse problems with the prerequisite core feats. E.g. Improved Toughness...

It's not really core-only feats, but rather a removal of the "official" certification from the non-core feats. It happens that I like the concept of feats, if not always the implementations, or the official conception of how feats are supposed to work in general. (E.g. Toughness being a flat...

I run a 3.5e game with every PC being a gestalt-ranger character (fighter-ranger, cleric-ranger, wizard-ranger, etc). No prestige classes, the travel spells are combed out to give a more 'rangerly' feel (so no flight, teleport, etc. And no clerical 'Travel' domain), house rules allowing animal...

I tried to finesse the issue in my Brotherhood of Rangers game (3.5e) by having all the PCs be gestalt-rangers (fighter-ranger gestalt, wizard-ranger gestalt, cleric-ranger gestalt, etc.) None of the PCs were "the party Ranger" because they all were rangers in the wilderness-heavy setting. But...

I try to play the monsters according to their nature. Within that bound, I do try to have them play to win - against opponents who they believe to be much weaker than the PCs actually are. If the monsters had an accurate understanding of how tough the PCs were, their immediate reaction would be...

Working now.

Part of that is inflation. Per Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2025 an item costing $20 in 1980 would be expected to cost $76 today. There's also a distinction to be made between good art and fancy, expensive art. Also between good text layout and attempts at getting...

The "Worlds of design: A pretty high price" thread isn't accepting replies, possibly because of the date of the post being "tomorrow" I get a "We have a server error" message.

The usual 'fix' to a <70% chance for a 'competent skill' was "In routine circumstances, the character gets a big (>30%) bonus." Except somehow that bonus never got applied in practice. And that's why I glommed onto Take 10 as one of the Genuinely Good Ideas of D&D 3.x It solves this and a...

I'll repost, yet again, an old USENET post - not by me, I just agree with it. ---- Nov 20 2006, 5:48 pm Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy RPGs and video games differ from most ordinary board games in that there doesn't have to be a loser. I think it's reasonable that they attract mindsets...

Yes, maize corn is out of place in settings meant to be strict counterparts to pre-Colombian-Exchange Europe. However, "corn" was, and in some contexts still is, used to refer to wheat and barley (and rye and oats) rather than to maize. Whiskey is a broader term covering American bourbon, Irish...

There's an element of how broadly or narrowly one defines "sandwich." Flatbread wraps and food served on top of bread have been around since ancient times. "Trenchers" of bread are a medieval thing that would fit very well into a standard fantasy "knights & castles" game. Sandwiches in the form...

I was icked out by the concept of "dragonhide" armor in 3.x D&D for a similar reason: Wearing the skin of a talking sapient... So I did a fluff-text change for my D&D games. Same costs and benefits, but a different name, and a source that doesn't rate an [evil] descriptor when one takes...

Two of my read-only fiction settings, one fantasy & one sci-fi (alt-history with psi abilities) have humans as the only sapient species. It's "standard" to have multiple sapient species in a game, because the earliest games were that way, but it isn't necessary, and I'm not convinced that it's...

That's ridiculous. Everyone knows that orcs (or at least real orcs) hate vanilla ice cream. Instead they have a passion for pistachio ice cream. "It tastes like elves." :)

Which ancestries/races/species are "standard" as PCs will vary by setting and campaign, especially in non-D&D games. In my old Etan game, for example, there have been both PC and NPC goblin and lizardman characters, because those two are among the "standard" for Etan. But there won't be any...