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It varies according to the board game, there's not really one standard model. Sometimes you find games where there's a set of rules and then you apply the same rules over a series of otherwise separate games that are independent of each other. So people who can play one don't need to learn how...

Quick mathematics moment. Under the 3e paradigm you typically face 14 encounters of equal level before you level up. Assuming half the encounters are potentially lethal, and that there's a 99% chance that you'll survive any particular potentially lethal encounter, do you know what level you get...

With Runequest you'll need to consider whatever your culture considers appropriate in terms of combat magic and make an effort to become competent at that, or at least to be able to resist it. Even then, skill is more significant than most magic. You can get by with being resistant to magic and...

So, even when you're not doing well you're routinely turning out half the barbarians output as a wizard and sometimes totally overshadowing him in an area that's supposed to be his strength. How often does he overshadow you by rolling high in areas where your wizard is supposed to be strong, and...

Dominating an entire combat sounds like a little bit more than competency. And I think it's telling that the barbarian, which I think is generally seen to be a class that's among the best at combat and not terribly good at most other things, gets to dominate in the combats when the wizard...

Why should the Wizard ever dominate? Most of the other classes don't get to remake themselves based on what they need to be good at a particular day, or to decide that today they're going to be nearly as good as the Wizard at the areas the Wizard is 'supposed' to dominate. So why should a class...

Psychic was a term in use well before the pseudo-science of Psionics appeared. And still is used, of course.

"No psionic power duplicates a spell." Seriously? Unless 'duplicates' is interpreted to mean 'does exactly the same thing but a different number of times per day' or something similar, you've already killed a huge number of things that a psion class could/should have with the PHB. Mind...

Different "board" games have different ways of releasing material. Sentinels of the Multiverse (which is a card rather than board game, technically) mixes up major releases and small packs with new characters/environments. Advanced Squad Leader has a wide range of material, different Starter...

Small ships may keep the players involved in that they're crewing each station, but they also have the possibility of making them less involved because those ships aren't effective in some situations. And of course automation and simplicity makes it possible for a small crew to man a very large...

That's a very good link, at least for the American side of things. The European navies bring ships of the line, older 64s and newer 74s and 80s of two decks and a small number of three deckers. Less of those than you'd see frigates, though apart from single ships escorting convoys (where they...

Do you need to know about warships or merchantmen or both? With regard to the latter, your division is largely between coastal types, ocean-going types, and inland types. With the warships, it's Ships of the Line, Frigates, and a wide variety of smaller vessels with an assortment of quite...

Runequest was my thought too, although you could try Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system. There's several games based on the system, some more complex than others - RQ6 is rather on the complicated end in that respect.

Gurps seems like it would be a good option, or possibly Hero System. Either deliver a detailed set of mechanics and have rules for creating robots and modelling weapons.

I imagine the Ranger in D&D does come from Tolkien, or at least the name does (since the only ranger we really see much of is Aragorn, it's hard to say what the class should look like if he's not the only example you wish to use). Tolkien probably took it from medieval literature/history, ranger...

One you're missing is the Mass Effect setting. A mix of jumpgates and short-ranged Type 0 FTL. And really well known, of course.

"Duty is heavy as a mountain. Death is light as a feather." Naming a thing that is more important to a particular PC than their own death is rather hard if you don't know the PC in question. Finding something that matters more to a PC than their life is usually not that hard, as long as PCs...

That's a description of the results, not the method. What does the character do to achieve those results? Does aiming where the opponent isn't mean you swing harder? Does Does it represent swinging so hard that you overbalance (costing accuracy) but miraculously manage to retain enough of timing...

Under every definition of dissociated mechanics Justin Alexander managed to write, Power Attack from 3e was either dissociated or utterly ridiculous. My character concept is a good archer. OK, 4e can deliver that. My character concept is a good archer who's good at negotiating with people...

It isn't necessary. For me it quite often depends on what the players are thinking/talking about. If handling the problem is what they're concerned with, then I'm not going to make them turn up too late to do that; the thing that they're interested in is the resolution of the situation, and I'm...