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I think we're talking about two types of heroism here. There's the mundane protagonist who becomes heroic through actions, and Negflar's "radiant, glowing big dang Hero with a capital H", whose heroism is shorthand for being extraordinary and supranormal. I want my PCs to be the former but not...

Why would you assume that not using a rule equals not knowing it exists? Sounds cool. I love wilderness challenges. My question's pointless. No-one would admit to using an XP structure they deny exists, so it was never going to be enlightening. I agree. I disagree, but 40 pages in I don't...

It can change over time, too. For a couple of years after 3e came out I was hooked on prep and character builds, but now I lean toward retro-clones because wading through the details makes me nauseated.

Of course, if you can link to any sustained defences of the roll-out I'd be forced to reconsider. If they were there, you'd think would have been as prominent as the criticism, even to an infrequent observer.

That thing's been in Australia for years. We love pokies here. They're the fastest way of returning pension payments to Treasury without being wasted on fripperies like rent or food. Really? Is there a Hasbro the rest of us don't know about?

True, but from a marketing perspective the point still stands. Subscribers have a steady stream of official material coming straight to their hard drive, which relegates 3P material to a retail ghetto. The GSL is essentially a lengthy way of saying, "Tsch-yeah, buy a licence and publish if you...

It's times like this I think "fluff" should be filed under "concepts that desperately need a new colloquialism". Then again, RPGs may get to keep the term simply through redundancy.

Whether that style can be achieved with newer rulesets is a persistent question. IMO, that style is fundamentally about [brace yourselves] realism, with characters who are largely bound to the laws of physics (yes, plus magic) and spend much of their careers facing mundane...

Hard to say what you mean here. I wasn't having a dig earlier about punctuation and sentence structure. I honestly can't understand your posts. Can you explain in more detail what I outright claimed not to know? Incidentally, "nobody I knew" doesn't demonstrate anything objective. It's...

Except that all those systems except 4E are open. None of them has a character builder that can't include third-party material, or a DDI that excludes non-WotC publishers. The most popular game has an audience locked into a stream of products from the chief publisher, with outside publishers...

I really don't know what to say to that. Have you ever met a DM so retarded they would allow such silliness? The cult of literalist rules obedience is a matter for another thread, but getting XP for coins found in the street isn't a serious consideration in this discussion. That sounds like...

Well, the Conan who just wants to steal was made up by Robert E. Howard. I only used him as an example. But he might not be a good example, since there now seems to be some confusion between character advancement mechanics in roleplaying games and the moral code of a pulp-fantasy book...

Without punctuation and sentence structure it's hard to understand what that post is, but you seem to be saying that a Conan has no incentive to save villagers from a vampire unless it's carrying gold. If that's what you mean, it's incorrect for several reasons: 1. Vampires are worth a hefty...

Conversely, the pressure is now to slaughter everything in sight, and players who want to be Conan the thief rather than Conan the killer aren't catered to.

I see I'm not the only one to run a halfling adventurer gourmand. Great thread. I'll have what ultimoed's having.

It's interesting, but unreliable, and I have no expectations of Obsidian Portal, so that's not really relevant. It's established that the vast majority of gamers don't take their gaming online, so Obsidian Portal only represents a particular demographic, and we don't know what other features...

Things like OpenD6 are also retro-cloning, so there'll be a variety of genres served there, like six-sided Supernatural. The "retro" bit is coming to mean a philosophy of RPGing, rather than a strict type of rules or genre.

I don't think early D&Ds cater too well to high-fantasy sagas of epic hero-ness. They start from a pulp ideal in which the PCs are presumed to be money-grubbing mercenaries whose contribution to the greater good is largely coincidental or the product of later character development (which I...

It's telling of the demographic of people who use Obsidian Portal to run online games. Not generalisable, by any measure. WotC estimates, what is it, a million or more players worldwide? I very much doubt that link gives a true estimate of what's being played where by whom. Note, as well...

Now that you mention it, you're probably the "some DMs" I'm remembering. I don't quite understand what you mean about the NPC age/profession chart. How do you transfer the PC's spending of treasure into a standard for NPCs?