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d20 certainly encourages hack & slash (being the only default way to gain experience) - but I find that most people really are more interested in the story. Of course, I may also just be avoiding an entire subclass of players.

It's very hard to ignore the skill system, or the fact that it's a d20, without making it not d20 anymore. People who say the system doesn't matter - why play with rules at all then? It's certainly possible to go entirely free-form. Why advocate d20 instead of a myriad of vastly simpler...

I'd like to second this. You'll have to skip a couple scenes (ahem) - but it is really quite good and takes few liberties.

I forgot to mention Star Wars d6! That rocked. Too bad WEG lost the license :-( Call of Cthulhu (by Chaosium) - roxxors.

Legend of the Five Rings main book (or books, though I think I prefer 1st edition) - Bearers of Jade (Just worth the read, period) - Otasan Uchi boxed set. It's a -CITY-! H.O.L. - Human Occupied Landfill... Full of things that would make any grandma go blind, but... damn it's a riot...

GURPS: Traveller is probably the most popular, but GURPS can be hella complex. BESM by comparison goes the extreme opposite route :-) I really liked Star Wars d6... It captured a feel that d20 just didn't - can't. I still see copies of the main book being sold all over. BESM is the...

Erotic Torment Something with no save, 1 action casting time that permenantly incapacitates a character regardless of stature with no means of escape save via a 5,000 XP costing spell seems a tad... overpowered. :-p Unless you have a really strict system for true names drawn up too, and even...

You must play Call of Cthulhu at least once. It's a commandment of roleplaying, or something. It's very similar to D&D, except 18 is pretty much your max for hit points. And skills are percentile based - it's real simple... But if you don't play CoC, Eric's Grandma will cry.

A historian friend of mine said that, in order to get at the numbers, look at the supply orders. "An army of 100,000 men" - yeah right... But hey! Here's a food order for about 5,000...

Go to rpg.net and read the advice Chris Aylott gives. 'nuff said.

Not today :-)

There is the matter of diamonds being more common than quartz. A 5,000 gp diamond can be as big or small as you want it to be - on Earth it's value is artificially inflated from worthless. It's pure carbon-13, and a bit less than a quarter of the weight of an equivelant volume of iron, about...

7th Sea (Swashbuckling Adventures is the d20 conversion) is supposed to be set like that, but unfortunately Theah (Europe) has no 'Africa' or major parts of Europe, etc.

Well, I haven't used -all- of the 3.5e changes yet, and since I have my own Archmage and Heirophant classes, the save issue was never really a problem. Combine this with the additional fighter feats and fixed ranger and bard, I haven't had any issues with a (potential) +2 DC.

Indeed, I think something needs to be done about spears in D&D. They are the weapon of humanity, after all, and every culture got very good at cheaply adapting it to a wide variety of needs.

It depends on your game. There is something to be said for realism. Boiled, hardened leather is stiff as a rock, for example - actually more protective than chain, even, but chain was preferred because it offered more mobility. In D&D this is the exact opposite - hardened leather is somehow...

There is also an early (15th century?) French text entitled "Le Jue du Hache" (The Play of Axe) - it's online in places (translated) and goes over a large number of positions, some of them intuitive, half of them illegal in the SCA and other fighting :-) - and, of course, not a full list of...

I would add a dex requirement (17+?) - I like the -4 penalty without it idea. I could do it, but I was very poor at it. The guy who trained me could do it markedly better. I did go florentine and am quite flexible and coordinated, however, I was just a hair too uncoordinated :-/

Well, often times shorter (ie, 8 feet or less) two-handed pole-arms will have a butt thrusting hold / spike. From my (only so authentic) experience, dealing with opponents in close quarters is rather difficult. Maybe call it a feat (may use reach weapons to threaten ajacent squares).

I've played since OD&D, and I use a method depending on what kind of campaign I run. For one-shots, I will do the rolling method. For low to mid power campaigns, I use 22 to 36 point buy, depending on what level I am shooting for. For world-shaking heroic campaigns, I have a program I wrote...