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Combat was plenty lethal in Lord of the Rings for mooks, secondary characters, and various characters in the backstories. It was much less lethal for the primary, protagonist characters. Is this distinction what you mean when you call combat in LOTR "cinematic"? D&D combat out of the box gives...

I can't think of an alternative genre that I'd obviously prefer to sword and sorcery fantasy as the original seed of TTRPGs[1]. I'd rate the comic-book superhero genre as maybe just as good but not obviously better. Science fiction or two-fisted pulp might have been almost as good, but only...

In Real Life, different handguns come in different makes, models and calibers because all handguns are compromises and One Size Does Not Fit All. (And similarly for other kinds of guns.) To emulate this in a game, instead of trying to make each model slightly different, it might be better to...

I play TTRPGs[1] largely for the power fantasy: For the opportunity to vicariously do things that I cannot, ought not, or dare not try to do in real life. I GM TTRPGs largely because I love world-building and character creation. Those are the parts of fiction writing I find fun and easy.[2]...

Medievalish-Fantasy game systems do a fair job of emulating the injury and death rates seen among secondary characters and nameless mooks in read-only fiction, but a poor one of emulating the much lower injury and death rates among the protagonists - the characters who would be PCs in a game...

I'd just as soon that magic healing wasn't such a big crutch either. The problem is that it's a crutch that gets used because most game rules make combat and injury so grim and gritty that there's a strong perceived need for that crutch. Limping along without that crutch is seen as being even...

Random Thoughts: Contrary to the usual advice, I'd say to NOT make magic items super-expensive. If they're available at all, they're available cheap (compared to the standard rules) - but mostly they're not available at all. In econo-speak, the supply of magic and magic items needs to be...

Almost anything can be made to work with the right sort of players in the appropriate sort of game. For a more-or-less standard D&D-type game, though, what's wanted is an aristocratic or oligarchic society where the PCs - at least at high level - get to be the aristocrats or oligarchs. That...

First thought: This might be a way to run my gaming white whale: A "Dawn of Creation" campaign where the PCs are the primordial beings at the very beginning of the world, where Earth, Sky, the World Tree, and the PCs exist, but everything else (wind, water, fire, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars...

I was aware of Melee and Wizard (Metagaming) before D&D, but only got copies of them at about the same time as the 1e AD&D PHB and MM (before the DMG came out). I don't count them as being proper RPGs; that had to wait until In the Labyrinth/Advanced Melee/Advanced Wizard came out a few years...

IME it goes beyond that. One of my pet peeves is how parents, teachers, librarians, authors, and publishers all seem convinced that kids want to read about kids their own age - not about older kids and certainly not about adults. And kids mostly have to take what they're given; they're not in a...

I was 18 - and the DMG wasn't out yet, just the PHB and MM. I got a late start because I didn't do mail order back then, and it was only when I started college that I found a brick-and-mortar hobby store that sold the games. (I do remember seeing Metagaming ads before I went to college - and I...

One common style I observed in the Old Days of D&D was of very rapid leveling up until the characters reached the Levels That Didn't Suck, at which point the emphasis and player goals moved away from "make my character better" as a top priority. It sounds to me like your player wants very...

Loretober 31: Tradition The one tradition observed by everyone in the world of Gold-Home is the Great Fall Feast. It's a mandate of the Golden Ones who created the world, and even peoples in tropical lands that don't have a "fall" observe it. The exact date of the Great Fall Feast varies by...

Loretober 30: Export/Import Despite its reputation for insularity, the Furfoot Counties import and export a surprising array of goods. In a halfling burrow-home in the Counties one might find wine from the Kingdom of Vinland, coffee from south of the Wine Sea, tea from the eastern lands of the...

Loretober 29: Artifact December 31 ("Yule") is an artifact of the Minuscule Calendar, a day of the month and year that doesn't belong to any day of the week. On leap years, the day of Wule ("double-Yule") is an additional artifact that likewise doesn't belong to any day of the week. Furthermore...

Thank you. I'll add Issue: The frequent use of temporary ability score increases and decreases is elegant in theory but a pain in the heat of play. Elegant because a broad cascade of effects can be produced by a simple +4 to DEX or -2 to CON. And a pain in the heat of play for the same reason -...

Back in the 3.0/3.5 days I wrote an essay listing the things I loved, things I hated, and things I had mixed feelings about. Posted here: D&D 3E/3.5 - Retro-cloning D&D 3.0 And here are some additional issues I have, despite 3.5e still being my preferred D&D version Issue: The exacerbation of...

Loretober 28: Death Nobody understands death. Not even Death.

There's an incident in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower where Hornblower discovers a group of sailors engaged in illegal gambling over rat-baiting. Since there are no terriers on board ship, the participants have their hands tied behind their backs and attack the rats with their teeth. Goggles are not...