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And I'm the opposite. I'm an old-school dissident who has embraced that "social contract" and who will kit-bash like hell to eliminate elements that cut against that social contract in any of the old or old-style rule sets I've run. Only they were often bright shiny new systems when I first ran...

Me too. Piggybacking rather than creating a post to explain my "some other way" choice.

I've encountered problems with insufficiently-optimized characters more often than with over-optimized ones, on both sides of the GM screen. But I may be unusually tolerant of highly-capable PCs when I GM. One of my touchstones is "Would I introduce an NPC like that? Or would it be unfair to the...

If the character is one who would go ahead despite knowing (or suspecting) that there is a trap, then that's the easy version to play. Playing a character who is ignorant or trusting when I am not is the hard version. My character exists in a world where traps are a thing; why wouldn't he...

My experience is that players are willing to accept rules for "disengage without a last attack to avoid the opponents' last attacks" and "fleeing combat is faster than pursuit, at least in the short to medium turn," as a convention of the game. The hard part is retreating when comrades are...

There's a distinction between NPC enemies who become prisoners because they've been non-lethally rendered hors de combat and those who become prisoners because they throw down their weapons and cry "I surrender!" In the first case, of course the NPCs are going to attempt to escape and/or strike...

I believe it was. I didn't remember the name, but I recognize it now that I see it. But I do remember asking how one can tell when a party conducting a "hit and run" raid has broken contact after the "run" part, and getting that answer.

It's an old issue. I'm reminded of some of the discussions I participated in, ~25 years ago in the USENET newsgroups, particularly rec.games.frp.advocacy. The problems of both PCs and NPCs fighting to the death and never trying to surrender or flee, problems with GMs trying to set up scenarios...

It was a long time ago: Fall of 1978, I arrived at Michigan State as a freshman and discovered the Tolkien Society and a bunch of geek-stuff, including D&D. I think I played before I did any actual DMing, but I did start DMing very early on. I do remember buying the AD&D (1e) Players Handbook...

It was a series of products, set in the Known World (Mystara) of the BECMI/Cyclopedia rules. Each Gazetteer detailed a single nation.

One campaign idea I've been toying with for some time now is a "Dawn of Creation," aka "There were beings of might in those days - and you are them" game where the PCs are the Eldest Deities at their start and the World Tree is just a sapling. Standard (old school or 3.5) races and classes...

It's a world-building decision. I've had gods that were mighty heroes who ascended to godhood, gods who created the world because that's what gods do, and gods that just mysteriously are. One thing I do dislike is the idea of "gods need worship." The most I'll do along those lines is to have...

I've done both. It depends on the game-world. In games using D&D I stick to the D&D languages or a lightly modified version. (Dwarvish and Gnome are a single language with two different accents. "Dialect" is a new language, spoken by humans, that abstracts all the variant human dialects and...

I like point-buy systems - outside of D&D. For D&D, the system I use in the games I run is to roll 3d6 for each ability score, in order, to set the minimum scores. Characters can then increase those scores until the total of the six reach a campaign-specific value (85 for my Brotherhood of...

In my 3.5e "Brotherhood of Rangers" game, I had an encounter with generic "vicious vegetables" grown by ogres. Vicious Vegetables Large Plant – Neutral Hit Dice: 4d8+12 (30 hp) – CR 3 Senses: Blindsight 20 ft, scent, spot +1, listen -- Languages: none Initiative: -1 Speed: none (no movement)...

Does anyone have alternative / house rules for Barbarian Rage that give an "at will" ability to do something rage-like, or at least one that doesn't require the player to do careful resource management? ("Do I expend a precious Rage use now, or do I save it for when I might need it worse...

Yes, it's folklore. But by the time it reached gaming, "cold iron" had developed a number of different origin-stories. My preferred origin-story is that gold, silver, copper, and lead can be hammered into shapes while "cold" (room temperature) but iron was a "new metal" that had to heated up...

I have been known to buy RPG rulebooks when I have no intention of either playing or running the game, just to see "how other people do things." But I won't buy a new edition I don't like just to "keep up" with playing or running.

If sticking to true pre-3e Old School, none of the above. There is a reason why I changed my then-main campaign to The Fantasy Trip once Advanced Melee/Advanced Wizard/In The Labyrinth came out. Otherwise 3.5e, with my insistence as a DM on carving away anything that doesn't look like the...

Pretty much all my DMing has been with homebrew settings.