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You're still thinking that race in the movies is an analog for race in the movie's universe. That is incorrect. The movies use race -- skin complexion, really -- as a metaphor for cultural allegiances. The darker you are, the more culturally and politically aligned you are with the Fremen. The...

Yeah, this is what I see happening, too. It's going to be the exact same problem that the Custom Lineage rules had: it's just always optimal to ignore the built-in design. I'm reminded of the Soren Johnson/Sid Meier quote: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game."...

Sorry, missed this response. Skin color isn't important in the book because it's not particularly useful for coding because books aren't a visual medium. If we look at the coding that is present in the book for Paul: He has a Christian first name, a Greek last name, and he's the son of Duke...

He's entirely correct. It's a combination of wanting to do everything, and with basic recognition of how horrifyingly bad the balance is on AD&D multiclass rules in practice. Because until name level the XP requirement basically doubles, you're rarely more than 1 level behind. In 1e AD&D at...

Yeah that's actually part of what prompted it. If you read the description for climbing tools it doesn't include rope or grappling hooks. It's all stuff you use on top of that.

In, I think, either the second or third campaign we ran, someone asked if they could take Rope as a tool proficiency. Ever since then, we have played with Rope as a tool proficiency.

Hm. I think people are happy to look, but I think MCDM is right to gatekeep it behind Patreon. It's fine and maybe even helpful to have a peanut gallery, but you save yourself a lot of trouble if you charge a nickel to get in the door. I think it's hard because... you need to have something to...

Yeah, this matches my experience. System shock was typically forgotten about as long as nobody mentioned it. "Ok you can do that, but you might die instantly," isn't a particularly good mechanical design for a game. From my experience, there were a lot of rules in AD&D which, during the...

Having looked through the playtest rules (which is linked on the KS page) the system looks fairly heavy. Feels like a blend of PF2e, 13th Age, and maybe a bit of GURPS? There are options or extended rules for everything. But it feels like a lot of complexity. Like you don't just fall. There's...

There's a difference between capitalism and Capitalism. I scroll through this KS, and what stands out to me isn't the kind of game they're trying to make. What stands out to me is how many ways they're trying to sell it to me and how much they're willing to let me pay for it. If it doesn't...

Yeah, this one is extremely over-monetized. I think that's predatory, so it turns me off. Like this is on top of having 7 "tiers" going up to $400. Just no.

"Early backer rewards"? Gross. I don't need more FOMO capitalism.

So, speculative fiction often wants to portray an entirely different set of cultures. It makes a world feel more real and larger. This brings some unusual problems because... Well, the fundamental problem with non-humans is that the creators of the games and stories do not have an example of a...

I think it's important to remember that Gygax's game is the dungeon crawler. The game we turned D&D into after Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods and after Dragonlance is not a game whose morality system is intended or designed to tackle global politics or holy wars. It's just meant to tell...

It was a marketing angle in 2014 when Hasbro execs wanted to shelve the whole thing and the design team had to promise they could get their old player base back from Pathfinder. Their 4e strategy and failed and they needed to draw in all the old players. Today it's at least a little weird to do...

I understood that the 50th anniversary was the primary reason for the whole thing. I remember speculation that there would be an edition drop beginning to wane when One D&D was announced because they waited until August 2022 to announce it. That didn't seem like nearly enough time to do a...

Nah. I know they don't want us to call it 5.5, so I'm calling it 5.24.

I don't hate them. But I don't find them very interesting. The only gnome-specific trope that I really like is the tinker or artificer or mad scientist. And I think goblins do it better as soon as you relax stat bonuses. I think warforged are more interesting when they do it, too. The gnome...

Wait, why would they try to "address" that? That would subvert the themes. The point was that Paul is not a good guy. He's a Duke from off-planet that is mistaken for a messiah by the indigenous population because thousands of years ago a Bene Gesserit left manipulative and false mythologies in...

I wouldn't describe any of that as elements of power gaming. I would call that basic social awareness, paying attention to the other players, and simply having system mastery. To be fair, I've known a lot of TTRPG players that have been lacking in those areas. But I don't think there's anything...