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Yes, they're competing against themselves. But they're not competing against themselves significantly, and certainly not enough to make it unprofitable. And balanced against that is the profit from the actual sales of the book. Remember, the lost profit created by publicizing a WotC product...

Of course I pull the chain. If the chain leads to fun things, great! If the chain leads to unavoidable death and the DM thinks I'm stupid for even pulling an unknown chain in a dungeon, then I'm not interested in his campaign and I don't care if my character dies.

The difference is in the marginal value of +1 at various points along the probability curve. In one case its flat, in the other +1 is more valuable closer to the center. You may be able to approximate any particular roll on a bell curve distribution by rounding to the nearest 5% and using a...

Necromancy isn't inherently good or evil because, even if inherent good or evil even exist or make sense as concepts, or even if inherent good or evil even exist or make sense as concepts in D&D, "necromancy" isn't real. So you can change its attributes as you like.

Technically, if you're sending your character into a predicted and essentially guaranteed death, you're not encountering a "chance" of failure in the sense that I suspect you mean. What you're doing is quite scripted. And if your actual goal was to die nobly in battle, then you haven't...

The only thing I like about a bell curve distribution is that it makes each +1 to hit after the mid point less valuable than the one before, and each +1 to hit before the mid point more valuable than the one before. This gives players an incentive to go at least to the mid point, then a little...

When players do obnoxious things and claim that "its what my character would have done" that's a problem because they have: 1. Created a situation in which verisimilitude will predictably be annoying. 2. Acted with verisimilitude. 3. Blamed verisimilitude for the unsatisfying (for other people)...

Leatherhead- Its not about whether you "can't" have encounters that are challenging for flying characters. If that were the concern then flying wouldn't be available for characters at any levels at all, instead of the way it is now where flying is available for higher level characters. The...

"I love Game X, and I hate Game Y. Therefore, I hate anyone who loves Game Y. Therefore, because everyone else in the world thinks and reasons like I do, anyone who loves Game Y hates me. Therefore I am justified in hating them." This form of reasoning explains a lot of unfortunate facts...

Confusing your house rules with the actual rules and then getting belligerent, particularly when discussing problems with a game. Joe "Game X has Rule Y, which isn't very good." Bob "No it doesn't. It has Rule Z." Joe "I'm looking at the rules right now, and you totally made that up." Bob...

Well, by the definition you've created, even many campaigns typically thought of as sandboxes might be railroads. If your sandbox has a lich who's zombie hordes are slowly conquering the world, you might not tell the players that they have to fight him, but I know that my players would, based...

I ask the players, out of game and out of character, to make sure that every session ends with some agreement on the course of action that will be undertaken in the next week's game. As long as they stick reasonably close to that system, there's never really a moment where the players are...

Plastic or metal?

I'm with Doug McCrae. Its work when I *have* to do it. And since games have to be scheduled in advance to get everyone in one place at the right time, games are frequently work. They usually stop being work partway through the session, though. Preparation is always work. Its necessary at...

I don't worry about out of game talk if its related to the game. I let players use regular language to describe their actions. I just don't let them use regular language to communicate with each other. Honestly, the most important part is not to think too hard about it.

I can summarize the rules pretty easily. You know X number of words. These are the only ones you can use to talk to other people, though you can gesture and grunt. If you want to succeed at a task, roll a d6. If you have a skill related to the task, you need a 3 or better. If not, you need...

This was their briefing/backstory/mission: "You wake up. Hungry! No food in cave!" I'm pretty sure I can infinitely reuse that genius piece of writing.

Things we learned: 1. A brontosaurus loves honey. 2. If no one understands you, yell the same thing louder. 3. stick = not-rock 4. A good way to give out experience in that game is to let everyone vote on each player's most memorable moment of that evening, then let them suggest and vote on new...

I'm missing about 20%. This is normal for me. The ten non sock puppet non drive by members that I've put on ignore are very, very profligate members.

My ignore list has 54 people on it. But in a way that's not true, because a lot of the accounts I've put on ignore are sock puppets for other accounts, or fly by night trolls who have only posted once or twice. The real number is probably around 10, once you drop the people who I'd never see...