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That's a point of difference between us. For me, a major reason to have fantastic elements is to cater to the escapist fantasy of a more glamorous world, one with less of the grit and "dung age realism" that I find depressing. Also, as an aesthetic preference, I want to avoid the feel of a...

I believe this is a false dichotomy. A fantasy world can be weirdly different from the real world and yet still feel like a real place. That said, I prefer to build settings and worlds where magic and the supernatural is something baked in, rather than bolted on. And despite - or because - of...

I play out every combat. The only reason I wouldn't would be if the players say or otherwise make it clear that they want to just handwave the foregone conclusion. That's been very very very rare - I only have a vague memory of it ever happening even once. On the flip side, if I decided not to...

I didn't like the 3.0 version of Haste, but I don't like the 3.5 version either. As noted, the ability to cast two spells in a round is a huge deal, and something I'll discourage, put stoppers on various tricks to allow it, and even blanket-ban (with the possible exception of Time Stop, but even...

Now there's a twisted thought: What strange ways are used by the cultures in your game world to execute criminals? Now I have a world that features the bad guys performing human sacrifices - and executions resemble those sacrifices too closely for either psychological or magical comfort. (You...

I tend to do more and more-exotic world-building for the settings of my read-only fiction than for the settings I run games in. In my game worlds, for example, there will usually be a single moon that's Luna-like in apparent size, brightness, and periodicity, and calendars will be either the...

Underrated: Text. I see lots of geeking out over movies, TV, comic books, and even audiobooks, but give me printed words to read.

For most things I find a binary success mechanic to be perfectly adequate. Either you pick the lock open, or you don't. You find the hidden compartment when searching the desk or you don't. Your assessment as to whether the border guard is open to a bribe is either correct or it isn't. Your jump...

It's a fair cop, guv. Yeah, it's attar of roses or rose otto, but not otto of roses.

And if creating undead requires black onyx gems, why aren't black onyx gems contraband - and why aren't there search & destroy campaigns against them? In my games I normally rule that substitutes and synthetics are available for that sort of magical use. In any case I prefer to move away from...

The poor readability was the chief thing I ranted about.

The aesthetics can be distinguished from the rules. 3.5e is my personal edition preference and while I like the mechanics, I hate the aesthetics of the rulebooks. I've even ranted about those aesthetics back in the day.

I voted "No thanks." In theory I might enjoy a game with psi if the setting was right and the psionic rules were carefully crafted. In practice psionics is even worse than magic in terms of "everyone who is anyone must have psi powers, or at least must invest heavily in defenses vs psionics."...

Transcript? I prefer text over practically any podcast/talking head/audiobook.

The Fantasy Trip, or rather my homebrew based heavily on The Fantasy Trip, with fatigue-St costs for spells. One point I particularly like is that the St cost to cast a spell isn't rigidly fixed to the Intelligence-stat requirement to learn it. One point I particularly dislike in the stock TFT...

I'd say that I want magic to feel magical too - but my mileage significantly varies when it comes to what makes magic feel magical. Magic that's very common and even ubiquitous does feel magical to me. It gives me that "We're not in Kansas anymore!" sense of wonder. Rare magic doesn't; it...

3.5 is the only D&D edition I'll run any more. (I will run other, non-class&level games, however) It does have annoyances, but later editions have kept the parts I find annoying while dropping the parts I really like. In particular, I like 3.5e for having a skill system that was actually halfway...

A fourth point that pushed "christmas tree outfitting" was the inflated cost of more powerful items over weaker ones. For example +3 armor was 9000 gp, while +1 armor, +1 shield, and +1 amulet of Natural Armor came to only 4000 gp total. So that aspect of the system pushed for "lots of items"...

Thoughts: 1. Tracking ammo can add a touch of verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. 2. It's good to have matching levels of abstraction. If the combat system rolls for each arrow loosed at a monster, then tracking each arrow loosed is a good pairing - better than...

50% for all arrows is my house rule. 3.5e has all arrows that hit being destroyed, and half of those that miss being lost or destroyed. I don't remember what 2e did.