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As hilarious as they can be, those are just starting careers... it's where you begin, not really where you play or end. The presumption is that you came from one of those Basic Careers but have been pushed into being an adventurer of some sort and you'll be working your way out of it to the...

I agree with you, once the number of players gets large, I'd rather play an RPG, but a game like Pandemic is great for off nights. It's got a rich enough mechanic to be interesting but it doesn't take long to learn or play.

Good description of how I felt, absolutely. I know folks who very much felt otherwise.

I've played a ton of games over the years but the one that keeps bringing me back is... D&D. Yeah it's got its issues, but in terms of long lasting play, it's the champ. I do end up with some newer favorites that pop out from time to time. I really enjoy Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures, which...

Interesting. I am totally not edition warring here as this is just about my preferences, but I actively hated DMing 4E, though I liked playing it from about levels 1-14. I felt totally constrained by the rules as DM. When I switched to 5E I was skeptical at first but rapidly left 4E behind...

One thing you could do if you don't want the PCs themselves to be doing a lot of crafting is to have certain monster parts to be harvestable and sellable. Essentially they're providing stock for crafters. For example, let's say troll heart blood is essential for producing Healing Potions. PCs...

They feature strongly in my two campaigns. In one---a very long-running 2E game where the PCs are around level 12--- they've been central. The PCs market themselves as a mercenary company, although I'm not sure everyone in the group sees themselves that way. They've hired on lower end...

I have read the Fleming novels. Bond is pretty darn silly there, too. He has lower power gadgets, but gadgets nonetheless, is "licensed to kill", slays with the babes, and the rest of it. It's lower key than the movies but it's all there. Pussy Galore is a character invented by Fleming! He also...

The hobby itself isn't, but different genres have their tropes that are, and yet the fiction can be compelling in various ways despite, or sometimes because of, those aspects. I mean, James Bond being one of the biggest media franchises in history featured lots and lots of silliness (and lots of...

Exactly, it's all silly. We have to decide what silly we're willing to allow in our games. Things like assassins are key parts of some genre fiction that people find inspiring for their games. Want to emulate James Bond, Day of the Jackal, Jason Bourne, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, ninja...

I seem to recall way upthread that you played/ran Rolemaster. I played and ran that quite a bit back in the day and I'm not sure there's anything about that system that demands well-run monsters, to say nothing of its plethora of tables and charts. Essentially what TMK is about is helping...

I'm not sure where you got the idea I was suggesting that enemies should operate in a non-logical fashion. That's totally not what I was suggesting, just that things should fit in the secondary reality set out by the game world and that it shouldn't blow the GM out of the water with rules...

The fact that the Japanese fought so tenaciously absolutely did have an impact, even if they lost: For example, Allied tactics had to change markedly and the atomic bomb might well not have been used had the expected casualty calculations of the invasion of Japan based on stats from Iwo Jima and...

That's certainly true but it's not necessary to assassinate national leaders to make assassination effective even in interstate warfare. Assassinating the much less well-guarded generals or other leaders down the chain can be quite effective. I read somewhere but lack a citation at the moment...

I listened to the audiobook of "The Monsters Know" in a cross-country drive last year. I'd already stated using a good bit of that on my own before I'd heard of it, but I got some additional ideas from it and I definitely recommend that DMs make use of the basic ideas. They're essentially free...

Yeah I'm with you. Modern times feature plenty of assassinations. The Russians certainly tried to assassinate or capture Zelenskyy in a decapitation move at the start of the Ukrainian war, and assassination by defenestration is a routine feature of their internal politics. The Israelis drop the...

There's a sweet spot I think. I wasn't arguing for a rule-less game, but I tend to find in much more rules-heavy systems that players, justifiably, want to see the rules followed, and they always outnumber the DM. For example, 3.X and 4E(^1) especially seemed to bring out the legal eagle in...

Oh I have no issue with a war, and I am totally with you regarding having solid logic. I was talking about the actual running of it, where "and your group, out on the far right flank, now see" is very reasonable. Too many rules or simply having to track too many pieces just bogs the DM down.

Tactics are a good way to differentiate otherwise similar monsters. I haven't looked at the 2024 orc compared to the 2014 one, but orcs and hobgoblins are fairly different in abilities and should reflect that in their battle tactics. I always played hobgoblins as masters of discipline. They...

That's very true. In addition, at least with foes, the goal isn't necessarily to be realistic per se but interesting and present a challenge to the players. (This depends a lot on your table, of course.) So I'll often use tricks as GM that aren't purely realistic but are ways to make things...