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I liked VRGtR a lot, but I've never actually run anything in it and had no particular attachment to the old stuff, so take that with as much salt as you need. More than anything else, I came away from it wanting to create my own darklords and domains.

Did anyone else start thinking about this as soon as they started reading through JTtRC? We've got an extradimensional combination city and refugee camp with connections to other worlds, and we've got a set of prison pocket dimensions. We've got a setting that's too utopian for some people to...

I received Shadow of the Dragon Queen for Christmas, and I'm glad to see it being analyzed. I'm interested in running it, but I have two main concerns: one is that the rate of leveling up feels too high. I understand the desire to move things along more quickly than in older modules, but I feel...

I haven't gotten a chance to test out the gameplay yet, but I've bought Fabula Ultima and I'm very excited about it. It's fun to look through all the class skills and pick out fun little synergies you could build a character around.

If you're looking for some villains while you're at it, you could add in a radical splinter sect that takes the idea to a Logan's Run type of extreme: if birth and childhood are sacred, one might reason, the older a person gets, the further from that state of grace and the more profane they...

On the subject of making fighters more broadly talented instead of more focused, here's an idea for a feat-based fighter: what if they could select their feats at the start of an adventure, the same way a caster selects their spells? Now the same fighter can be a sharpshooter, a fencing...

I'd expect armies in D&D worlds to be very focused on defense. That isn't really based on any one edition of the rules, it's more based on the core experience of D&D being "a handful of unusually powerful people go out and solve problems with violence." The army can't be the ones doing that for...

This isn't an accident. Zorro and Robin Hood will never gain the power and breadth of tools of a Doctor Strange by just training and getting more experience, and neither do the classes that look to them for inspiration. Power comparable to high level spells just isn't acquired in the same way by...

Lately I've become convinced that the root of the LFQW problem lies with the central mechanic of D&D levels: that a person can become infinitely more powerful just by practicing. This works just fine for casters, since the basic idea is someone who gains immense power through knowledge. A...

Instead of the elves being the oldest race, sometimes I think about a setting where they're the youngest. They seem like "humans, but better" because they were specifically created to be humans, but better. Less fey and more replicant.

I appreciate some cyberpunk in my superheroes. Or some superheroes in my cyberpunk. Something like that.

I never even knew Claim the Sky existed. Now I'm curious. Anti-Earth and the Tyranny Syndicate are one of my favorite things about Freedom City, but I always felt like they converted the Crime Syndicate of America over from DC a little too faithfully. There should be more of a difference between...

You know, it's funny. When I think of explicitly "mundane" heroes dealing with supernatural worlds - your Conans, your Batmen, your Odysseuseseseses, any of the early twentieth century pulp heroes - they're almost all polymaths. They might have a preferred idiom, but they're the master of...

I never tried to run it, but I had a vague idea to do something with Takashi's Angel Androids where he tries to get rid of them as remnants of his shameful criminal past, and in revenge they launch a crime spree against his new company. Or maybe they're secretly still working for him. Or maybe...

I'd think that the Champion subclass should be what you pick when you want to play someone who does amazing physical things without the roleplay assumptions of a barbarian or a monk. Increased lifting capacity, jumping distance, bonuses to athletics, moving at full speed in heavy armor.

This is similar to the way that 13th Age does it, and in my experience it seems to work rather well.

This! This is how I would square the circle, if I were a game designer. Which I am not, and for good reason, but - okay, this is assuming an "ideal" fighter, who contributes as well as anyone else at "hit it until it dies" but still needs help in the other pillars and general versatility. I'd...

Hey, I know her! :D Jinx-Mihoshi was a lot of fun to play. I wish the game had lasted longer than it did, but I guess that's always the way with message board games. The aphasia attack is a neat idea!

If you're worried about complexity but you want strength to be more important, you could borrow a mechanic from Champions/Hero System. A lot of weapons in that system have minimum strength requirements. Maybe it takes a 13 Strength to be able to effectively use a longbow. At 15 Strength, maybe...

I came to this a bit late, but it's absolutely fascinating to me and now that I've read it I'm going to spit out some rambling thoughts on the subject from a setting perspective. Apologies in advance. There are two main variables, to my thinking: a) how difficult/unusual is it to make a pact...