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The problem with adding sensible rules for grappling is that the base rules for combat in D&D aren't sensible. Shouldn't every attack require a touch attack to hit, and then a different roll to harm the target? But scoring a hit isn't the same as actually hitting, and doing damage isn't...

After playing Knights of the Old Republic, the Star Wars video game based on the d20 tabletop game, Shamus Young wrote about redefining hits and hit points in a way that would make sense for duels with deadly weapons: The first step is to throw away the hit point bar. We don’t need it. If...

As kids playing AD&D, my friends and I liked both the fighter and magic-user archetypes, but we definitely had the impression that the high-level magic-user was far more powerful. Whether the fighter was too weak or too powerful though, there was always the issue of how his fighting prowess...

Do you need a formal rule set at all? Perhaps you could run a free kriegspiel form of the game: The system for finding the results of combat in a free kriegspiel is classically simple. First of all the umpire looks at the position of each side: how many and what type of troops are involved...

But people prefer gambling to grinding. That's why I'm confused. I can see why the players don't want to fail -- or to succeed and then fail, due to some defense roll -- but I'm not sure that's at all symmetrical. I think they're perfectly happy to have their opponents fail or to use some...

Why do you want hits to be (almost) automatic?

When I mentioned kung-fu action, it was in the context of common grappling "scenes" from adventure fiction, e.g. fight scenes from Hong Kong action movies. There, the "grappling" is often a "cool" step or two in a combo: slip the punch, outward block to wrist control, palm-heel to elbow...

I agree that those gothic tales are much more proto-fantasy than modern fantasy. They introduced many genre tropes that are now part of modern fantasy -- and D&D in particular -- but they also lack many tropes central to the modern genre. So, they include dark, mysterious, and immense...

I'm hoping that playing spot the trope will make it interesting. Sometimes the original feels derivative; sometimes it manages to feel even more original after you've read the derivative works. By the way, Cawthorn and Moorcock's list starts with Gulliver's Travels and then continues with a...

Read the Amazon "Look inside!" preview (page 13) and tell me what you think. Certainly the D&D dungeon, full of orcs with treasure, is not found in gothic novels, but inordinately large dungeons are. Real-life dungeons, after all, comprise a single tiny, dark chamber.

The Dying Earth stories, too. If every spell cast requires a "scroll" to be crafted first, that removes much of the casual nature of spellcasting. One use of speak with dead costs 375 gold pieces...

I feel like I almost agree with most of that, because it should be true -- but I don't think the designers of D&D's mundane classes have ever given much thought to realism, beyond not giving Fighters magic powers, or to non-magical settings. Using D&D as the basis for a non-magical...

I'm thinking I should try to read Otranto by Halloween.

By the way, The Veil War is still going strong. It's up to chapter 25 now.

Looking back at the original poem, it's not even clear that the vorpal blade beheaded the jabberwocky -- until it was already dead, that is: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock...

I recommend reading Winchell Chung's Atomic Rockets site from (virtual) cover to cover.

Exactly. We can limit spellcasters a number of ways: Cap levels across the board, the E6 way. Turn the spellcasting classes into prestige classes, the d20 Modern way. "Re-skin" the semi-spellcasting classes, like the Bard, as Wizards, Priests, etc. Eliminate spellcasting per se, but allow...

We should probably ask how we want grapples to play out. What are the most common grappling "scenes" from adventure fiction? One common scene involves a tentacled monster grabbing a victim and pulling it toward imminent doom -- underwater, into its gaping maw, whatever. For this, we just need...

High-level Fighters can strain credibility -- not because of their power-level, but because of how hit points, etc. scale -- but high-level spellcasters change the game world. So, another option is to limit only spellcasting levels.

When someone brings up grappling, they lose a level, and when someone brings up negative levels, they get tackled and pummeled -- grappled, if you will.