Search results

I voted for strongly preferring PDFs. I love me some books, the tactile experience is irreplaceable. I have tons of shelf space in my apartment dedicated to nothing but collections of gaming books. These however are historical collections, I haven't purchased a dead tree gaming book in the past...

You're not wrong but BAB is something that can qualify you for some advanced classes and feats. This puts some advanced classes, feats, and prestige classes out of reach of players that picked the "wrong" base classes. A player that picks base classes according to their character's concept can...

I voted "used to play but no longer". I really wanted to love D20 Modern. I thought it might be able to be the generic game I could get my D20 True Believer friends to play. I unfortunately found it to be very disappointing in actual play. Some of my problems with the system have to do with the...

I have long railed against Wikipedia deletionists and their absolutely ridiculous power trips. However looking over the linked Wikipedia articles I can say they're generally pretty bad. The Rick Loomis, Lord Soth, and Vecna articles need a serious rewrite. The Lord Soth and Vecna articles are...

Jargon is simply a fact of life in a game with some form of rules. Even rock, paper, scissors has jargon (words that have special meaning within the context of the game). There's nothing inherently wrong with jargon. It becomes a problem when designers go overboard with jargon or use it to add...

1) I like the (dis)advantage mechanic. I think it's generally better than a +whatever situation bonus. 2) I like that movement can be done in parts without requiring special abilities.

Here's a link with a ton of still maintained Alternity resources. I thought there was a copy od the Alternity Fast Play (base rules) on the site but I'm not seeing it. I'm sure a little Google-fu could find a copy without much trouble. The fast play rules are plenty for new players if you're...

That may have been my problem with them. I haven't played the game by the published rules in more than a decade. My friends and I were new to the game and as I recall there was no good GM advice on using the situation die. There were matrices telling when to step up the die but that's not quite...

I played a bit of Alternity when it came out. It had/has some features I appreciate as well as some I just loathe. Some stuff I liked: The settings were really good in my opinion. Dark•Matter and Star*Drive are both awesome. Dark•Matter was basically X-Files with the serial numbers filed off...

Bargle. I hate Bargle to death.

Voted: BECMI/RC Close second: Core 1E AD&D I prefer the BECMI/RC game for its simplicity and flexibility. It makes a good system for a hack and slash one-shot but is flexible enough to run a long campaign. There's not a lot in the way of complicated rules and the DM is expected to rule on...

I picked up one of the boxes of these minis the other day. Overall I'm happy with the contents of the box as I got some Goblins to use for one of my characters. That being said there's some aspects that really disappoint me: The cost of single minis is borderline ridiculous. I know Paizo...

Not even close. Dungeon Fantasy uses all the normal GURPS rules but provides worked examples of characters/equipment/etc for the setting. The first book has a bunch of character templates, equipment lists, and lists of skills and advantages appropriate for the setting. No new rules are...

Just to add to what Johnny3D3D said, GURPS has some more meaningful options for characters in combat situations than D&D offers. Things like cover and good positioning are as important as high skill. Carrying a shield isn't a boring little bonus but a whole suite of new defensive actions. You...

I haven't played a THS game in a while but I'm a fan of the setting. To answer your questions in order: 1. THS is no more difficult than any other GURPS game to actually play. That is to say not terribly difficult. If you try to incorporate every tiny bit of THS fluff into a game your story is...

Why would the game's history have any bearing on your descision to buy it today? That doesn't make any sense at all. Call of Cthulhu is a fine game but the fact the rules haven't changed for over a decade doesn't make it so. I'd vote for Traveller in this situation. Character creation in...

Computers can add a lot of utility to the hobby and I think could be very enabling. Not every use of the computer needs to be based around replicating a physical tabletop. I think their best use is taking care of the gaming chores so players can get on with their actual gameplay. In a game with...

Colour of Magic and Hogfather are both on Netflix. I'm waiting impatiently for Going Postal to appear. As for GURPS Discworld it's actually pretty fun to play if everyone are Pratchett fans. The old version used the GURPS Lite rules and runs pretty smoothly. A lot of the action tends to be...

To put some of the numbers in perspective: Say you're trying to roll against a DC15 on a D20. With no modifiers you need to roll at least a 15 on your d20 to succeed, you only have a 30% change of rolling a 15 or higher on a d20. Now say you've got a +5 modifiers on the roll, you need to roll...

I agree with your sentiment but not the message. If we start confusing language we're going to end up with people having two different conversations. The word "tactics" is already overloaded in this conversation because we're using the same word to mean meta-tactics that take advantage of game...