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I feel somewhat bad about not supporting my game company but I haven't bought many of the 4E books beyond the powers series. While I like to roll my own setting, in the past I've purchased many of the game books. But the 4E books seem too heavily integrated into a standard setting. For instance...

In general, the referee invests a lot of time in the game. He or she is essentially tasked with executing a vision of a world and along those lines, restrictions on races, classes and gear are, to me, perfectly reasonable. Just because the game designers thought to include something in a ruleset...

Put my own group together and ref the game works for me. Typically have to go through a few line-ups of players before you get a group that feels right but being willing to put it together and run the game gives you a big leg up. It might be different in the on-line games but for the...

I've always had fun springing unintended consequences on the players, be it a change in the economy when they flood a town with gold to their actions inadvertently assisting the bad guys. I try not to make all such outcomes bad, that wouldn't be fair but it is amusing to think through the...

A combination of "set-piece" encounters, some random material prep'd (but probably not a lot, just enough to fill in 2-3 extra encounters, maybe more if your encounters are really short) and maybe a couple hooks. Faced with this sort of thing, I'd come up with: Flesh out an enticing loot...

I thought you were going to plug MMORGs but they are more 3rd class anyway (although I have had my fun with them). I dunno. I wouldn't consider what you describe second class. Sounds pretty fun to me and if I didn't have a nice face to face group of long time friends, might be a very nice change.

Think of a favorite movie or two and see if you can turn it into an RPG plot. A movie is typically about the right length to try to capture in a session. Cross genre works fine. I once purloined the plot of the first Die Hard for a D&D game. Naturally there is some translation from screenplay to...

A post-Apocolyptic one-shot game with a PC named "Rider Haggard" who was a former pharmicist with the motto "I never dispense a drug I haven't tried." He wiped his motorcycle on a wet road. "Forget the chick on the back, how's my bike?"

Going way off topic. I've been reading the Hobbit to my son and was amused to re-read the part where the two wood-elves get drunk on the King's new wine, allowing Bilbo to do his dwarf-in-a-barrel bit, thus undercutting the amusing but annoying LOTR movie seen where Legolas drinks Gimli under...

My wife is not a hardcore gamer; Clue, Scotland Yard and the occasional Risk game is about as far as she'll go. But she has always been extremely supportive and did give it a go. As for a quote, from the one time she tried the game: "You guys talk too much. I just want to kill things." She...

I don't see alignment so restricting. In my gaming circle at least, alignment is just a guideline for the players (or a ref playing an NPC) on how to express the character. There is no cop, not even the DM, coming down hard if the player "violates" alignment. If you are chaotic good, you don't...

I think MMOs make death far too easy and some RPGs make it too easy as well. My group has often (although not lately) played with house rules that prevent resurrects or at least make it very, very hard. But never being able to get back on the server? that seems a little dorky to me. I could see...

As in fiction, so in RPGs: show don't tell. In the case of the write-ups, you could try your hand at either true fiction or at least describing some aspect of the world in a more "show" manner, maybe a tale or tales that illustrate a few key aspects. Aside from pre-game material, a few initial...

Interesting post to the game community although if you were really writing a letter to WOTC, it would need to be a lot shorter and to the point. In the business world, the letter is going to be parsed in the first few sentences and filed based on that...

In the post in question you preceded the wishful thinking comment with a quote from Moltke that seemed to minimize the need for planning anything so it wasn't much of a stretch to interprete the wishful thinking comment as a knock on any background, but caveat-ed as you have since made your...

In many ways, I agree with this. Some words about what the character did before the game started and some incidents that should or should not motivate them don't mean anything to the game if they don't actually cause observable behaviour in-game. But, there are plenty of good players who can...

Agreed :) I'd give XP but I'm tapped out at the moment ;)

Well, per the post I did point out, saying any effect of backgrounds is "wishful thinking" is rather bold. It is the sort of statement to catch one's attention, isn't it? Put another way, weren't you intending to denigrate backgrounds when you made the wishful thinking statement? I have trouble...

On the weather, having static hot and static cold regions would likely lead to some circulation cells transporting hot and cold across the faces of the world and since air movement is chaotic and extreme hot/cold make for lots of turbulence, you could also have some world class storms, maybe...

It need not take a momentous event but must all level 1s have non-momentous backgrounds? The following are so common as to be cliche'd yet they do provide other paths to level 1 that can affect the PCs. And cliche'd as they are, they do tend to show up in RPGs, books, movies... The...