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Well ... no. Sometimes you re wrong, but there is no good way to know it. For example, in 1850 you might have asserted that atoms were indivisible and the smallest possible piece of matter. You would have been wrong, but have really no way to know it. Bad depiction of racial stereotypes have...

I am an associate editor for a journal; this piece of writing so bad that I would reject it with no encouragement, and not even consider sending it out to review. I might check if English is the person’s first language and if not suggest that they find a co-author who is a native speaker. I only...

That's only true for people dedicated to the simulationist point of view. For many of us, hit points are a mechanical device vaguely associated with your ability to take damage that should not be used to model reality. It's really hard for many of us to handle a system where 1000 hp == feeling...

Yep, it's always been the issue with hit points in D&D -- 4E made that very clear. If you renamed hit points to "stress" it makes so much more sense. Your leaders don't heal you -- they receive stress. You don't die at 0hp, you drop from accumulated stress. If you run out of surges, you have hit...

It's fun watching simualtionists and gamiest talk past each other through this thread: Simulationist A: "in the real world, hitting someone with a hammer could cause permanent harm, therefore the act is evil" Gamist A: "by the rules, it was impossible to hurt the kid with a hammer, therefore...

If you haven't checked out Thousand Year Old Vampire, I'd strongly suggest considering it. It's a solo (journaling) RPG that I found works mechanically well, produces a compelling narrative and is strongly atmospheric. It's been a ton of fun for me during lockdown as a solo activity and it has...

I have to say, all your CE characters have very limited vision. My CE character will do whatever it takes to get the child hurt, but not killed, stir up the crowd against the ”evil laws that stop a child from even living” and at the very least make the citizens distrust and fear the Authorities...

I used the weapon speed and spell duration based initiative modifiers in AD&D in a recent campaign, together with missile fire always going before melee. It worked pretty well. I used a single group roll or initiative for each side, so the order within each side was determined by their stance...

The estimated size of the US and Canadian rpg market in 2018 was about $65m. Now of that pie, how much pages to authors, artists and other creatives? In the overall book world, 10% is a pretty reasonable figure, so that leaves $6.5m. To pay a median US salary of $62K, that‘s pretty close to 100...

I’ve run a lot of one-shots at conventions, and two things I have found universally helpful, across several systems: First, pre-created characters that are 80% ready. This reduces set-up time but still allows players to make significant changes and make the character their own. Eg.: 13th Age...

Some people do design characters the way you suggest -- build a mechanical game piece and then add on a background which explains the game mechanics. But many people are more story-forward, thinking up a character's story and then trying to work out how to make it work mechanically. For me, I...

i played a lot of AD&D too, and a few unforgiving campaigns. But that was the expectation, so losing a character wasn’t hugely unfun. I’m really thinking about game systems where the social contact is that you will win unless unlucky AND foolish, which is most systems nowadays. But agree, beside...

I’ve run Devil’s spine and it went very well. It‘s definitely one of the better official numenéra adventures. Be aware that numenéra is not as combat-focused as other systems, so it is true that combat options are more limited, because the bulk of the action is expected to be exploration. If you...

Yup. Anytime a bad roll makes the game hugely unfun, it’s a bad plan. I have run a lot of convention games. And sometimes, despite my best efforts at pacing, I need to get through a combat scene. Or sometimes the group is having more fun doing non-combat things. What I do is to have each...

Sorry, I'm going with the usual definition of racism. Most definitions of racism are of the form "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group" You can be a racist by telling only certain...

Frankly, D&D is one of the most pro-combat of any of the popular, or even semi-popular games out there. It came from a historical background of being about combat and has strongly stuck with its theme. Super-hero games might be more about combat, but if you're looking in the fantasy genre, D&D...

I think they have the math right. I'm +20 to attack, so +22 with either heroism or CA, which is pretty much always the case. I'll assume just one of them is active. A Lich, our most recent level 12 foe, has a 31 AC, which is pretty normal. So I miss on a 1-8, hit on 9-18, and critical on 19-20...

We don't actually have an arcane caster in the group, but we do have a cleric and druid, now at level 12. So I have some experience: With three actions, you can make an attack roll at full bonus and cast a non-attack spell (e.g. fireball!) at full save DC. So especially for the cleric, it's...

CapnZapp accurately corrected my mis-statement (thanks!) -- here's a longer version You are correct that I was unclear as to what the percentage was a base off, and the natural reading of my note make it untrue. Here's a better part of statements statement: Increasing damage by 10% for each...

"Immersion" is a tricky thing and is extremely personal. It's a fairly vague notion, but seems mostly to be a feeling that you the rules don't get in the way of you doing what seems natural for you to want your character to do. When it breaks down, it's because of a disconnect. It may be that...