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Exactly. This is something that gets missed in discussions of game balance. All it means to say that an RPG is "balanced" is that the game system gives you accurate information about the power level of the characters, enemies, and various forms of challenges. Nothing stops you from ignoring...

It would be nice if there were some notice at the start of a thread when there's a moderator warning halfway through that might get a new arrival banned if he writes a response without reading the entire thread.

Well, this may not be a popular opinion, but some people just aren't temperamentally suited to discussions of game balance. This doesn't explain everyone, but there are certain people... I general, if someone connects "game balance" with "loss of wonder" then they fall into this category. I...

renown

I'm always a little surprised at the automatic assumption that Hasbro would be worse at managing a multi million dollar intellectual property franchise than would a bunch of gamers turned professional. I feel like there's this underlying assumption of "those corporate suits just don't get us...

I can beat that. I've been told that the reason that a gaming store wasn't going to restock a picked through supply of Reaper Miniatures was because they were having such a hard time selling the ones they already had. Think about that a moment. They bought a bunch of miniatures. Half of them...

Yeah, I can see that. Its just that I don't give them much of an opportunity to try that on me. I don't need multiple RPGs, and in any case I'm likely to spend some time on rpg.net reading up on them before making a purchase- so at best the retailer could direct me to something new and then...

I don't really know or care about the third post. But the first two I can relate to. I'm a bit sympathetic to the first post's worry about the changing relation of gamers and game stores. I understand that WotC basically has no public relations choice but to point out the positives, and that...

1. Player buy-in. Get them to agree before the game starts that the game will have a particular premise. Allow them to make suggestions on the premise, or allow them to suggest modifications. If you bought the ticket on purpose, there isn't much room to complain about the train's destination...

I don't think the reader is supposed to be cheering on the elf. I think you're supposed to be bothered by this in exactly the same way that you were supposed to be bothered by prior strips of paladins and adventurers farming goblins for EXP. Of course, that doesn't mean that you weren't...

I don't know enough about the internal workings of Catalyst to judge these sources. Does anyone else know anything about the credibility of these rumors? Because this is either a really horrible thing, or libel.

It would depend on how much good the stronghold rules were. And I guess I could admit that if the boring stuff were too lengthy there might be some of that irrational purchaser-anger involved if I started to feel like I was paying extra for unwanted rules just to get the stronghold rules. Not...

I didn't vote. I would be interested in a big book of stronghold construction, maintenance, and operation rules. I would be absolutely uninterested in a book that told me things like "a ten foot pole costs you X gp."

5% in character 65% in game 30% out of game I used to want to increase the percentage of in character conversation (most likely by turning in game third person perspective conversation into in character conversation), but eventually I remembered my own advice I've given to others- if they're...

Random thoughts: 1. Having one combat a day turns daily powers into encounter powers. This definitely affects the degree of risk your players will experience. 2. There are a number of ways to damage downed characters, although you may want to use them sparingly since no matter what your...

Richard Dawkins has a discussion in one of his books about how people's understanding of the nature of a "species" tends to be impeded by an affectation for a way of looking at the world as if it were governed by platonic forms. That is, they envision that there's some ideal "raccoon" that...

1. Typically people are talking about siloing issues, and would prefer to have both combat prowess and non combat flavor, instead of just one or the other. This becomes quite an issue in 3e because you don't get very many feats, and they do double duty between combat and non combat issues...

Well, the big difference would be that racial essentialism in the real world refers to beliefs about essential characteristics of different ethnicities of homo sapiens, which don't exist, and the racial essentialism in fantasy or science fiction worlds refers to essential characteristics of...

Ironically, every conflict has people who say this, too.

I remember a comment on boardgamegeek... the topic of conversation was the constant warring about the game "Dominion." Dominion is a pretty popular game with a lot of fans, and as a result there's a constant stream of threads accusing Dominion of being overrated, of being a "solved" game, etc...