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And you are the one making it. I think so. Wayne stated, and you pointed me at his post by way of agreement, that someone running a module in a manner that he disapproves of is actually not playing an RPG at all. On an RPG forum, that's an attack. A passive-aggressive one that can be disguised...

In which case you and Wayne are using "RPG played he way I like it" as the definition of an RPG. I agree to disagree. Disguise it as you will, your attempt to control the definition implicitly and inherently places a value judgment upon the term, and as someone who spends his day trying to make...

That said, I don't believe that "degree of choice available to the player" is what determines whether something is an RPG or not, since I've played NWN modules that offered me more open freedom than some tabletop games I've played in. :)

Note, though, that the Strength is the same. This is a guy who can climb, jump, and swing a mace just as well as he did before. For that, I like the idea of a nearly skeletal figure, rickety but still feverishly strong for his frailty. He can swing a mace so hard that he breaks his own arm in...

I can put on my game designer hat and try to answer some of this. Bear in mind that my game designer hat is new and relatively small. Offhand, there's one game that I can easily think of that tried to actually simulate a tabletop game, and that's Neverwinter Nights. In NWN, a team of players...

I'd use Grim Tales (which is really almost d20 Modern, anyway, but with a bit more flexibility). As others have noted, you can toss in sanity rules, and you can quite easily make your own monsters so that your players don't give you any lip about "griffons not being able to do that". For...

Would "mutation" just be a new race, covered under the backgrounds section (mind you, this is based on one readthrough -- I'm by no means an expert)? I'm speaking of birth mutations, of course, not "Radioactivity has made me grow gills!" mutations, which would best be handled via talents. If...

I agree with the other folks. Hopefully the people who came had a good time. Next time you host an event, invite the coworkers who RSVP'd either way, or who at least called to say "Gah, something came up, sorry to miss", or who at the very least apologized profusely after the fact. Don't invite...

Depending on how absurdly cool your martial arts style is -- are you Jackie Chan, or are you doing absurd stuff like in the Swordsman movies? -- you can justify some fairly out-there powers: Paralyze (alt-save:Fortitude): A Chi-strike on pressure points Stun: A blast of Chi energy Autofire...

I've been happy with my LJ. It does what I need it to do, and with good tagging, I can usually find the articles I want. I don't know how much tagging blogger does, but I do know that it doesn't do cuts terribly well, I like cuts for when I'm writing something long and want people to be able to...

I do, both when I DM and when I play. It's fun, it's amusing, and it differentiates what I'm saying from what my character is saying. In the D&D game I play in, my character has some kind of Irish/Scottish hybrid accent. (It's slightly to the left of Ewan Macgregor in Trainspotting, and not...

Since I was at least one of the ones who sparked this: I voted no. My responsibilities certainly don't end at the end of the session, since I'm planning the next session. And since I'm the one planning the next session, I'm the one making a lot of other decisions as well. I voted no to the...

Did you note where I noted that I go the extra mile for players who go the extra mile for the game? I'm not planning to run the game as my private ego-boost clinic, but I am trying to run a game that balances the needs of several different players, only one of which is you (in this hypothetical...

As others have stated more lengthily and eloquently, the player has the power to leave, and the DM has the power to do whatever else he wants. Present all the demands that you like, but I the DM do more work than you the player, and I'm trying to create a fun experience for both you and the...

I occasionally get annoyed with the concept of revamping an old series -- I'd rather see a completely original series than see someone try to modernize a show from decades ago -- but then I remind myself that that's more or less what almost every author and playwright has been doing since the...

You could actually defeat him in BG1. It wasn't easy, but you could do it. I never did, but I've seen it done. As I recall, you had to make pretty good use of summoning abilities. The clerics were supposed to keep using Create Undead (which, in BG1, made lots of skeletons, not just one), and the...

That statement uses some value judgments that attempt to put objective values on subjective experiences. I can believe that you played that way, but the old "Guy who challenged Orcus and took his stuff and then killed all the gods" stories have been around since forever. Don't blame 3.0 for...

This appears to be a borderline-troll by presenting as new something that is explicitly stated in, at the very least, the 3.0 DMG -- some encounters should be speed-bumps, many should be in the easy-to-hard range, and some should be totally over-the-top hard. Everything else is handwaving, and...

Pre-editing down to: We do listen. We decide whether it makes sense. Amazingly, the opinions of people who don't have all the information about what content is and isn't possible given the limitations of the system often don't make a ton of sense. If you think that your opinion is valuable...

I like easy, light D&D adventures because they encourage good math skills. "Okay, you need a 15 to hit the dragon, and you rolled an 11 and add +6 to that. What does that make?" With D&D, at least, I'd be careful to keep it light and fluffy and aim for non-humanoid monsters as often as...