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Jack Vance Gary, I guess that like me you will be saddened by the fact that Jack Vance is ill and no longer writing. I just wondered what you make of his more recent work. The Lyonesse trilogy, the Cadwal Chronicles, Nightlamp, Lurulu, etc. are very different from the work that went into the...

Hmm. Not such a clever idea, perhaps. Read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.

Sadly, No. Back When I Was At University I Used To GM About Three Or Four Times Per Week And Play A Character About Twice Or Three Times Per Week. But Since All My Friends Got Jobs (Well, Most Of Them) It Has Not Been Possible To Play So Often. Indeed, I Am Reduced To Considering It A Good Week...

I Was Following The Typographical Convention Established In The OP.

Woot! Congratulations! No thirds?

Except to make the poll results mean anything.

Oh thank you, mighty one! You have bestowed upon me the blessing of freedom of speech! :notworthy:

What Do You Mean By 'Cinematic'? I Would Naturally Take It To Mean 'Like What You See In The Cinema', But That Is Not Very Helpful Given How Very Different From One Another Movies Are. I Would Like A Combat System That Emulated, Say, Casablanca. Would That Count?

:( I think that it is a mistake to include NPCs who are more capable and more steadfast than the PCs unless those NPCs are a) not concerned with the issues that dominate the PCs' adventures or b) are to at least some extent at odds with the PCs. You have in short overshadowed your central...

I once ran a campaign (not, admittedly, D&D) in which teh PCs were so over-the-top that I simply gave different troop types a terrain value. Which is to say that the PCs could move through enemy armies on the battlefield, but they slowed movement. The only reason for a PC to go around the enemy...

I was on the hockey team and the swim team.

Option G. Have the fortress fall, and the PCs held as prisoners of war for six years. After their country is conquered, have them sent home to their occupied homelands, where they will naturally form a resistance cell of merrie men in Lincoln green. Option H. Have the fortress fall, the PCs be...

Option C. Portray the commander as incompetent, senile, insane, or even treacherous, so that the PCs have to take over or die. Option D. Have the fortress fall, and let the PCs try to escape the wreck. If they fail, drag them off in chains to some sort of villain's base, where they learn the...

First games often do. In mine, all the PCs decided to commit suicide. All but one of the players abandoned my game and wouldn't come back. It took about a year of practice (running perhaps one three-hour session a month) before I felt really comfortable. And another year before I ran anything...

Yes. My Non-Humans Are Rarely Any More Alien Than Could Be Played By Humans In Latex Masks. I Find Truly Alien Characters, Characters Who Think (In John Campbell's Felicitious Phrase) "As Well As A [hu]Man, But Not Like A [hu]Man") To Be Too Difficult To Sustain In A Long Adventure. Playing A...

Yes. I Am The Eldest At 41, And The Youngest Has Recently Turned 14.

Perhaps. But I had the same epiphany. I do next to nothing specific to the session. I try to put in all my prep work on things that will be re-usable. Preparing reference documents for the players, doing world design, designing and mapping places that are going to be used again and again...

Now there is good advice! "Never miss an opportunity to pee."

G'day I was a smart kid, but contrary as a cat and obstinate as a pig. I refused to memorise multiplication tables (what did TI give us calculators for?) until I started playing an RPG called ForeSight, which was based on the 'ease factor' system from James Bond 007. Now mental artihmetic is...

Like I didn't see that coming.