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He had a stroke in either 2003 or 2004, can't remember, and then the meds gave him a heart attack. It didn't affect his cognitive capabilities at all. The stroke was minor, all things considered. But he had to slow down, and he also got diagnosed with an problem with the aoerta that put...

I think the very problem is not so much stating your opinion, but dropping it into a thread meant to honor and mourn dead person. It would be akin to dropping into a Britney Spears forum just to say her music sucks. It's no problem having an opinion, you just should be careful what venue you...

Why does it have to be "balanced" in fiction? It's fiction. It doesn't have the same rules as gaming. There is no such thing as "Balanced characters" in fiction. Novels and Movies/TV are a different medium. Games are games. They don't HAVE to be balanced. You don't roll dice or have...

I thought that was a given, so I didn't mention it. Of course it also protects the manufacturer, but like all IP laws, it's not just there for the business and not the public. I'm just saying there's another side to it, things like Goodwill and consumer rights, etc.

True. However, there are two things to remember. In a legal sense, a Trademark is designed to protect consumers from fraud or not being able to find the correct items. In some isolated cases, the law has allowed Trademarks (at least in dispute), to either be cancelled (due to dilution amongst...

No, it WAS easy to get noticed, as long as theres a market for gaming. There was always the equivalent of the farm team or the minor leagues when it came to game design. Dragon Magazine lead to a lot of people accepting jobs at TSR. Smaller game shops ended up providing a body of work that...

True, and that's also why I made my statements about the OGL, because the license has little direct influence on the game. Techniques and ideas for rules come regardless of the legal means around it. I don't see that license as a major factor to influence creativity. Although I see the RPG...

While I doubt paper will "disappear", I do think there's a lot of people who say "there will always be X" as being somewhat myopic. Lots of popular forms of entertainment expressions have either died or changed over time, as either technology or culture evolved. Here are some examples...

You're making the classic cum hoc ergo propter hoc statement. I'm not "throwing stuff against the wall". You are implying that there is a DIRECT, rather than INDIRECT, link between 4ed and the OGL. This is what you are saying. Mearls works on Iron Realms, which seems to be a prototype for 4e...

Prior Evidence proves that it's a lot more likely that even without an OGL there was still a good pool to choose from, as there has always been. You may be able to say Mearls was able to use his prior OGL knowledge to improve the game, but you can't say "without the OGL there would be no 4ed"...

ETA--Fixed a bad typo.

While I don't want to argue the pros and cons of the OGL, assuming that there would be no new designers without the OGL is incredibly shortsighted. Almost all the new hires in the D&D world came from any sort of smaller publisher or fan work. People like Monte Cook, Warren Spector, Ed...

It's pretty obvious to me that several of these games Gary never actually played (the comps from TSR, for instance). I'm sure some in the collection are but it's likely a very small number--I think a lot of the favorite games were sold already at Gen Con. So I really don't see any need to keep...

Gail's goal is to make Gary's work available to the widest amount of people out there, not just the die hards who argue about the "old school", etc. You have to admit computer games is the way to go if you're going to present gaming. There are few people who realize it, but Gary's return to...

Regarding the original question, I don't think any of you should expect a traditional release in the near future--that is, don't expect this to suddenly pick up where everything left off, or to see a sudden announcement from Gygax Games on their web site. I know Gail is putting in time and...

While he's getting better, this is likely to be a permanent condition. Tim Kask started a collection to help Ward with medical bills. Friends of Starship Warden

My thoughts on how the men will do would be the following--and I'm not rating the subjective quality of the work but their ability to meet deadlines, etc. Frank Mentzer. He's the best guy I've seen of the lot--he was pretty disciplined with the RPGA and I saw him do a good job creating the...

I don't dismiss the "idea" creation, but there's a lot to be said between thinking of an idea and implementing it. After all, people have had the idea of flying cars for decades, but nobody's actually created the darn thing. So that's why I don't care so much about Wesley's idea, because the...

To be fair though, at one point you did call yourself a historian in your "about me" box/section (though you've changed that), or sometime the term "explores the history", etc. The only reason I mentioned that comment is because I think a lot of people combine some of what you do with your very...

Grognardia is only one guy. And people need to remember that James Maliszewski is writing what amounts to an opinion column, there's a lot of personal bias there, and I would not call him a true historian because of that. I think a lot of readers forget that because he writes a lot and his...