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A variant is wanting relatively low powered magic that alters the setting in a measured way, mostly to justify that idealized pastoral / Hollywood vision and avoid a "dung ages" version of a pseudo-medieval setting (or a pseudo-pre-modern setting more generally). An extreme case would be...

Mileage varies. As a DM this is often a chore. As a player, I like these sorts of encounters. I don't have to 'pretend' they're fun; they actually are fun. Of course a monotonous diet of this sort of encounter and nothing else would be boring and undesirable - but a monotonous diet of any one...

My experience is that increased randomness generally appeals more to DMs than to players.

<Raises hand> This old USENET post isn't by me, but I unreservedly endorse it. 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 which aren't very interested in losing; and a lot of RPG...

I'm for a happy medium on this point. Some uncertainty is good, and both too much and too little can be bad. There's temptation in both directions. "If some uncertainty is good, then lots and lots of uncertainty must be better!" and "If limiting uncertainty is good then eliminating uncertainty...

Brides traditionally join their husband's family while still retaining a link to their old family. That makes a half sister's illegitimacy in her old family less important when she marries into her new one. Of course, as Cobalt Meridian pointed out above, you can have a different, fictional...

One house rule I apply to replace any "bleeding out from negative hit points" rules in whatever system I may run is to to have dying be a pure players option (or GM option for NPCs) when a character is reduced to negative hit points in the still-alive-but-bleeding-out range. The player may...

From a "humanity" point of view, even an illegitimate half-sibling can still be Family. From an "aristocratic politics" point of view, even an illegitimate half-sibling - especially a half-sister - still has some value as a marriage-and-alliance token. This sort of thing happened often enough...

And I'm the opposite. I'm an old-school dissident who has embraced that "social contract" and who will kit-bash like hell to eliminate elements that cut against that social contract in any of the old or old-style rule sets I've run. Only they were often bright shiny new systems when I first ran...

Me too. Piggybacking rather than creating a post to explain my "some other way" choice.

I've encountered problems with insufficiently-optimized characters more often than with over-optimized ones, on both sides of the GM screen. But I may be unusually tolerant of highly-capable PCs when I GM. One of my touchstones is "Would I introduce an NPC like that? Or would it be unfair to the...

If the character is one who would go ahead despite knowing (or suspecting) that there is a trap, then that's the easy version to play. Playing a character who is ignorant or trusting when I am not is the hard version. My character exists in a world where traps are a thing; why wouldn't he...

My experience is that players are willing to accept rules for "disengage without a last attack to avoid the opponents' last attacks" and "fleeing combat is faster than pursuit, at least in the short to medium turn," as a convention of the game. The hard part is retreating when comrades are...

There's a distinction between NPC enemies who become prisoners because they've been non-lethally rendered hors de combat and those who become prisoners because they throw down their weapons and cry "I surrender!" In the first case, of course the NPCs are going to attempt to escape and/or strike...

I believe it was. I didn't remember the name, but I recognize it now that I see it. But I do remember asking how one can tell when a party conducting a "hit and run" raid has broken contact after the "run" part, and getting that answer.

It's an old issue. I'm reminded of some of the discussions I participated in, ~25 years ago in the USENET newsgroups, particularly rec.games.frp.advocacy. The problems of both PCs and NPCs fighting to the death and never trying to surrender or flee, problems with GMs trying to set up scenarios...

It was a long time ago: Fall of 1978, I arrived at Michigan State as a freshman and discovered the Tolkien Society and a bunch of geek-stuff, including D&D. I think I played before I did any actual DMing, but I did start DMing very early on. I do remember buying the AD&D (1e) Players Handbook...

It was a series of products, set in the Known World (Mystara) of the BECMI/Cyclopedia rules. Each Gazetteer detailed a single nation.

One campaign idea I've been toying with for some time now is a "Dawn of Creation," aka "There were beings of might in those days - and you are them" game where the PCs are the Eldest Deities at their start and the World Tree is just a sapling. Standard (old school or 3.5) races and classes...

It's a world-building decision. I've had gods that were mighty heroes who ascended to godhood, gods who created the world because that's what gods do, and gods that just mysteriously are. One thing I do dislike is the idea of "gods need worship." The most I'll do along those lines is to have...