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Oh, we also had a shorter campaign in which magic revolved around interacting with spirits. There were three kinds, based on which social skill you used to interact: Rapport casters made friends and bargains. They would have to pay through the nose for powerful effects, but so long as they kept...

All of those are older versions of Fate. Fate Core drastically streamlined the game and in my opinion vastly improved it. The more recent Fate Condensed is leaner, meaner, and (again IMO) fixed what few problems Core had.

I honestly think that having freely-usable spells that are just better than skills are usually bad design. There should be something (other than prepared casting, since this isn't D&D) that makes it not always the best choice. With that in mind, Fate fills the bill. There's two basic ways to...

I had many hours of fun with the Hero system (Champions almost entirely) back in the day, but I don't think I would ever play it again. It's a combination of it being really fiddly, it making (in my view) some seriously bad design decisions, and having what I regard as better options now. That...

Thinking this over some more, it's almost like the elven ancestry is the issue, not the human. Arwen had an extra influx of 'elf', so she was 'elf' by default but got to choose otherwise. Vardamir (and Elros' unnamed other kids) had an extra influx of 'human', so he was 'human' by default and...

And if Arwen got to choose, why didn't Elros' kids? It's a puzzler.

Sure he would, because the choice was made after he was born. Manwë decreed the choice after Eärendil and Elwing visited Aman, for both them and their kids. It's not clear to me why Arwen got to choose, though, as Elrond was definitely an elf by the time she was born, and her mom was definitely...

The difference, though, is that the choice was made in-character. I'm not clear at what age, but my impression is that they were teenagers at minimum. Yeah, it was kind of weird! I suspect Tolkien considered it necessary because of the very different afterlives of elves and men. Aragorn isn't...

Fair, but our subsequent games were mostly a lot less demanding than D&D in that area. Also, we just plain didn't get in fights much. (We tend toward sneakiness and intelligence gathering, avoiding fights whenever possible.)

Yeah, that's what it's like. A mass of verbal tags that don't necessarily come into full focus. Facial recognition is totally different. Can anyone explain how they do it? I will say that I seem to be slower in recognizing people than most - it can take ten or more meetings with someone before...

I rarely GM, and never did at the time we played D&D. Come to think, I did GM a playtest adventure during D&D Next. It went fine, though I won't claim that I had the monsters using complex tactics. Yes, I have a bit of trouble keeping track of everything.

I more or less invented the quasi-elemental planes several years before TSR published anything about them. My version wasn't exactly the same, but it was so close that they could believably have iterated from my notes. Made me want to start wearing a tinfoil hat!

I'm fully aphantasic in all senses and also lack sensory memory - my memories are entirely verbal. Unlike most "aphants" I enjoy descriptive writing and imagery, I just can't experience it visually. I didn't realize everyone wasn't like me until an all-night conversation with a close friend in...

Influenced war, married, killed father-in-law.

Thing is, psionics does illusions and enchantments differently than magic does. Or at least it ought to. A psionic illusion should be all in your mind, while a magical illusion usually manipulates the environment to produce an actual image. A psionic "enchantment" should act like a...

"It's not procuring, it's matchmaking!" I've skipped over a few scattered sessions in which we had to deal with the mess that occurred in our hometown while we were in Stygia. Suffice to say that the cult I mentioned a while back really got moving on their plots. One of the ringleaders proved...

"It's not procuring, it's matchmaking!"

Wow, I'd be shocked if Devotion - the classic paladin! - doesn't make the cut. I like this idea a lot! Though I think the generic druid should get more than one. Two sounds about right, with moon druid getting four.

The inconsistencies he likes will destroy the hobby forever!!

Okay, my bad. Didn't know that.