Search results

It's popular in a variety of circles to entirely reject the "Combat is a Failstate" maxim, to deny it having any legitimacy. People do this for a variety of reasons that usually boil down to being unfamiliar and/or unhappy with the state of much Post-OSR and OSR design. To understand the Maxim...

So I have no idea what edition you are talking about. I don't think it really matters though. As a player, when you find yourself citing to rules minutia to argue against a referee's interpretation you're in the wrong, even if you are technically correct you're wrong. The referee defines the...

I do like the way that BECMI (Specifically "C" I think?) has various "prestige classes" and think it's a good way to manage things longer campaigns. The BECMI ones however strike me as fairly mechanically uninteresting. There's a lot of nice flavor there, but it's also pretty darn generic -...

I think this is the unfortunate side effect of the present epoch. One can't really stand on politeness, because even in this hobby there are people with extremely ugly views that they wish to make socially acceptable. It's unfortunate when creators we like or respect fall in with this kind of...

Greyhawk is such a strange book to me - the original LBB's read to me like a solid core for a system that has a lot of interlocking parts, and then along comes Greyhawk, and it's a bunch of ideas, some interesting and some no, that just kicks that all over to a degree. Fascinating example I...

There's always "cure disease" reversed? For me disease has always been a highly campaign specific risk - the few monster in the books sure, but an individual referee may focus on disease as a risk or not depending on the subject of the game. Despite the disease chance table in the AD&D DMG I...

Some of the best writing in the OSR/Post OSR, while also being very classic style dungeons rooted in pre-Tolkien fantasy. Considering the quality Ben L. is someone who should be better known. Also he finds and hires great (often new) artists (mostly - I don't include my contributions there).

You've pointed out one of the big Halfling advantages - the ability to get AC 0vs. bigger humanoids without any bonuses at Level 1 - though I'm not sure being harder to hit in plate armor then a fighter but better at shooting arrows makes a lot of sense here. The AC bonus in general doesn't sit...

People do work hard on them, and yes they deserve respect for that - it's like reviewing, a thankless task, especially in RPGS. I am not scorning the judges others who work on the ENNIES at all. If that's your impression of my comment I apologize to you. Rather, I don't give the awards much...

See how little I know or care about those things? I don't know who won the MTV Choice awards either. Are those still a thing?

You are being far more understanding with these posters then I could bother to be and I salute you for it (as well as your careful documentation of the text in discussion). I've been re-reading this tonight instead of posting...

I don't think these are a bad way to do a humanocentric world - I tend to do similar things with the "elf" class - though I should finish that write up... Paladins The main thing is that I've never really thought the "Dwarf" class was especially distinct from fighter beyond some minutia in...

More Aubrey and Martuin movies... "1805 - Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields."

Lesser known? Pathfinder and CoC pretty much win every year. They don't do much highlighting. I'm not laughing. You weren't just asking questions or poking fun in a friendly way. You clearly wanted to support this work, stop criticism of it, and to shame someone who doesn't think it sounds...

I'm just gonna say I find this hilarious.

That's an awful lot of religious gooblygook for an RPG book that doesn't seem to have any impact on play. Secondly it sounds fundamentally uninteresting - afraid to be interesting even. Sure there's Crystal Dragon Jesus and HIS followers fight with demon god of the abortion ladies ... but do...

Happy Holmes Day!

As per the past 10 years or so my next game will use 1974 OD&D without Greyhawk and with a set of house rules. I don't know that this is even D&D anymore though. Certainly won't be using the rest of the game either (monsters/treasure etc..) just the mechanical framework.

This is a good observation - except I think it undervalues a lot of "what you can do", especially in early editions. When one looks purely at the mechanics of combat (or exploration here - skills being mentioned) one is looking from a contemporary position that focuses on mechanical character...

I find it a bit telling that this thread is most talking about mechanics... specifically combat mechanics and character builds. This strikes me as a very particular framework for looking at older editions of D&D, and one with a very contemporary inflection. The fundamental difference for me...