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Realism has no bearing on the results in game, insofar as you can judge it at all. I can think of dozens of times it would have been "realistic" (by which you really mean "probable," because people have survived falls much greater than 100 ft.) for Conan to die in Robert E. Howard's yarns about...

In answer to the thread title: No, it is not necessary. I have played in games using the D&D rules where character death was never a possibility except via player consent. If it were necessary, the game could not be played without it, and this is pretty obviously not the case. Is it...

At a guess, Ryan probably sees Distributed DMing and Distributed Development as benefiting from many of the same creative processes. Is that true? I'm not really sure, but it seems to be the link he's drawing and it is an intriguing one. Alternately, Ryan may just be pushing the distributed...

Interesting. Ryan's thoughts on GMless or GM-lite play exactly mirror my own - that it is A, if not THE, potential future for the hobby. In particular, the idea of reducing the GM's workload to considerably below AD&D levels (to say nothing of d20 levels) gels with where I see successful...

Specifically tabletop RPGs? Probably 4 or 5 years, although I suppose I played some one-shots in that time.

I would argue that the PHB has reams of unnecessary rules. Ironically, those reams (mostly found in the Spells chapter) are some of the few that are rarely proposed for the cutting-room floor by "rules light" afficiandos whose definitions of "rules light" always seems to resemble "the version...

No problem. :) I think you have some interesting concepts here, but you absolutely need to lose the two-dimensional axis to explore them better. Consider the 'class levels' analogy I presented earlier - it's much more constructive to rate a system or player on how tied he or it is to...

To address your edited post (please don't edit during an ongoing discussion like this, BTW; it makes it almost impossible for ME to follow, much less anyone not participating): Plot v. Mechanics is not a "v." If Mechanics and Plot butt heads, it's because of a conflict within the rules, and...

I don't really think so. Gamist does. Rolist seems to be another word for 'Immersionist' and either doesn't cover either 'Narrativist' or 'Simulationist' (either type) or is too vague to be useful. It's also confusing because it could be construed as 'Roll-ist.' To a system matters person, a...

Continuous due to a combination of (on the GMing side) player enculturation and systems that are too time-consuming to wrap up an episode in one session, and (on the playing side) the preferences/enculturation of other GMs. I prefer Episodic. Caveat: When I say Episodic, I mean in the 'TV...

I take it you mean my statement of what I'm looking for? What makes it 'Internal?' Because it's focused on the rules being responsible for reinforcing genre? It's worth noting that, if so, the Internal/External axis is actually addressing an issue systems like the Threefold Model and GNS...

I still don't understand what you mean by "Internal" and "External." For example, on what do the following statements interact, and do they show up at conflicting ends: "The GM can change the rules in this book as much as he wants to suit his tastes or to fit the needs of the story." "The...

I think this version is improved from the original, but still doesn't hit the nail on the head as well as GNS (which itself isn't all that hot). I would read as, I guess, Tactics Neutral in this system - which doesn't seem right at all. First, Tactics and Immersion. I'm more concerned with...

Why would I be held hostage by a single player? I would run the game I was able to sell a majority of the group on, and the remaining player could participate or not as he liked. If he ran a game and I wasn't interested in the system or setting, I wouldn't hold his game hostage to my whims...

Yet 'whether its raining' can be vital to a PC's survival - a PC can be as imperiled by driving, torrential rain in some systems as he is by ravening beasts in D&D. I can easily conceive of an RPG in which 50 pages were devoted to natural hazards and 2 or 3 were devoted to combat with beasts or...

Actually, all he needs is a talented (not necessarily pro) graphic designer, at least one pro or semi-pro artist, and a sound business model. The only one of those that is all but guaranteed to cost him is the artist, although if he doesn't have a good grasp of design that will also get pricey...

Actually, neither the Eye of the Beholder games nor their Ravenloft derivatives were Gold Box games. Only the older Tactics/RPGs (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness, Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, Dark Queen of Krynn, Gateway...

Saga rules don't port well into standard d20. Standard d20 rules port extremely well into Saga, with occasional conversions and glitches - the latter usually caused by flaws in the particular standard d20 rules. Saga is like a significantly upgraded but still backwards compatible computer OS...

Looks awesome. Specifically, it looks like an attempt to sell a tabletop RPG to a relevantly-sized market, rather than repacking yet another D&D-, HERO- or WoD-derived offering for the same audience (or a Forge-derived offering for a vanishingly small audience). Short of a major licensed...

How old does a game have to be to qualify as a 'classic' games? I've seen KotR (current or last-gen console, even more recent on PC). I personally would say a game should be at LEAST ten years old (so no Starcraft, Metal Gear Solid, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or Alpha Centauri, for example)...