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I think there is a middle ground - two middle grounds, in fact! "The math" goes. We return to eyeballing challenges, with loose guidelines perhaps to the level-appropriateness of monsters etc. Their presence or absence are both factors of "the math". ie, if your party has mostly +2 to +3...

It's very popular to be dismissive of +x items, and the magical Christmas tree. I'm speaking of items that give a numerical bonus to an activity or score that a PC otherwise has, and which doesn't give a new ability or interesting feature that otherwise doesn't exist. So, +3 longsword, +2...

I don't mind carrying a crossbow, but I didn't expect to be the one using it all the time - a lot of the time as a low-level wizard without spells, I was trying to find useful things to do while avoiding confrontation and realising that when it came to hitting things, I was pretty useless...

BECMI D&D: Basic Red Box. Got me started. Rules Cyclopaedia. An excellent summation. AD&D: Dungeon Master's Guide. Fun. Deities and Demigods. I like monster stats, and this was the ultimate monster stat book. I mean, pretty useless, but entertaining reading. 2nd edition Planescape, the base...

Ok, what should they do with Magic Users, Wizards, Mages, call them what you will in 5E? This is a pretty basic, and very divisive question. I very much liked how wizards were in editions prior to fourth edition, but 4E fans I imagine will strongly disagree. And between the two of us, there's...

I don't agree with your characterisation of what I wrote, which might be because I wasn't clear enough. What I intended to put across is that characters don't have to share the limelight equally at all times - it is still fun to have a game where in some kinds of occasions one character stands...

Well, this thread is about people giving their preferences and opinions - none of us here is a game designer involved in making 5E. My post was about my preference, my opinion; I would urge the designers of 5E to bear it in mind, but I wouldn't insist upon it being central - that's for the...

They need a real classic of an adventure to kick the game off. Remember really good adventures? They did exist, back in the day, though I'm not sure how much was nostalgia! Not just for D&D either, but Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Runequest, they all had classics - and those classics are, often...

I think halflings were always about the thieving, even when they were doughty: Bilbo Baggins, to name but one! Mechanically, that's where they excelled, but they could make decent fighters (and in 3E, Wizards and Clerics). In terms of the racial default culture, though, I prefer a traditional...

I want Fighters to be consistent, credible threats at any level of combat. Tough and deadly, and capable of action-movie style stunts without shading over into ridiculous supernatural abilities. I think they should also be (at least potentially) a very simple character to play. Where does their...

Races: Human Elf Dwarf Halfling Classes: Fighter Magic User Cleric Rogue I think, if they open with a basic box with these in place, they're golden. For a more "advanced" style game, add Half-Elves, Half-Orcs and Gnomes to Races and Rangers, Paladins, Druids and Bards to the classes.

It really has to be both, to unify D&D players, doesn't it? Simple, like old Basic D&D; roll your stats, pick your race/class, dive on in! Complex, like 2E Skills and Powers or 3E; roll/pick your stats/substats, pick your race/subrace and class/kit, decide on advantages/disadvantages, choose...

I'd prefer combat roles as an explicit part of the game to be dropped entirely.

I hope roles in the way they are implemented in 4E are dropped from the game. The combat roles in 4E were an artifact of the intense focus on tactical combat the game had. I prefer my game less combat based and my combat less tactical. In combat, in editions before the third, thieves weren't...

Wow! Deliberately controversial much? There's some minor truths in this; the game isn't, at its core, about encouraging you to be heroic. If you're heroic, in Ars Magica, you run a fairly high risk of coming to a bad end. Some might suggest (in fact, I will) that this makes heroism more...

The geographical sourcebooks are generally compatible - the Gloranthan location supplements for MRQ1 were generally very stat-light. For supplements about magic (Spellbook and the various cult books), I'd say they would basically be near-useless; the magic in the game has been quite heavily...

Hi there I own both Mongoose editions of Runequest (and a few of the older ones), and I was quite disappointed by the first edition and very pleased by the second. In my opinion, a number of serious improvements have been made, substantially more than that between 3.0 and 3.5 D&D. The attack...

Of course, a real wizard will cast time stop, then fire out two castings of major arcana to produce a cathedral approximately the same size as the Little Metropole Cathedral in Athens (approx size 170,000 cubic feet, total casting volume provided by the spells 288,000 cubic feet). He would then...

For something slightly bawdier, you could always look at The Decameron. There's also The Canterbury Tales. These will have humourous tales you can use and probably individual jokes too. I believe they are out of copyright :P

I'm fairly sure (and trusty Wikipedia seems to confirm) that he wrote the vast majority of his plays in iambic pentameter, a form of blank verse most people would regard as poetry, even if it doesn't rhyme :p He may have written some prose sections, but it wasn't his typical style.