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There should be a point between "flashy showmanship" and "has real oomph" which also doesn't make mundane characters irrelevant. The problem comes when you have to satisfy people whose idea of what's mundanely possible varies, and whose idea of what "real oomph" means differ even more. Add in...

Revolts happen. Not necessarily successful ones, but some are (usually if they're supported by the wealthy urban peasantry, who can afford time to train as part of their militia duties and can hire mercenary professionals from outside the realm to do some of the harder fighting). I will note...

Fair enough. Western society typically has four castes . The Lord wants the field ploughed. The Wizard (who may also be the village priest) wants to keep the Lord's favour. The Knights want to fight an enemy and perhaps get noticed enough to have a little bit of land carved out for them to...

Of course if you believe what the Kralorelans and others say about MYsticism, they're very specifically not doing magic. They're merely removing limitations through negating their limits. Refuse to accept that gravity limits you hard enough, and you can fly. And some western societies restrict...

If hitting with a bow is significanntly more effective than hitting with a magic missile, then you actually have a choice - use the reliable low damage spell or use the unreliable but higher damage arrow. Anyway, the idea of all characters using magic is one that Runequest, at least in...

Well, not quite. There were several forms of Free Kriegspiel, and in most descriptions there's a clear emphasis on "friction", a recognition that random factors play a part, and the referee was encouraged to judge the likely results of a situation as it developed, listen to player input on what...

Flamen. Flaminis is genitive, of the Flamen. And honestly I'd probably translate that as Priest, since they were associated with particular gods (the Flamines Maiores, the three major ones, were the senior priests of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus). I'd perhaps use something like Loquitur...

Explicitly fantasy systems that I'd recommend: The One Ring Forbidden Lands Runequest Mythras Pendragon/Paladin Barbarians of Lemuria Conan The Dark Eye Ironsworn The Witcher Blades in the Dark Worlds Without Number Generic systems that have fantasy supplements or at least good fantasy options...

Would Chainmail count? 'm pretty sure I had thought before any of the D&D products, although this is going back to 1976. The first I picked up explicitly for RPG was probably Tunnels and Trolls - there didn't seem much point buying rules someone else already had, and we were also aware that a...

Sometimes. Other times one develops in play, or doesn't. Two recent games (one I played in, the other I ran) show the differences. In one, the PCs had a ship, a crew, and were pretty much free to do what they wanted with that and different players fopund different things interesting and played...

For games where it matters, I use bottle tops (plastic or metal) with a picture of the PCs face or the enemy fastened to the top with clear sellotape. Although I've got a lot of minis the only ones I use regularly for RPGs are the spaceships.

Rest In Peace, Mister Perrin. Your work gave me, and many others, a great amount of pleasure over many years. You will be remembered for it for as long as roleplayers gather.

I agree, some of the later books were more restrictive/didactic about what UPP codes meant and how much freedom there was to interpret them. I think some of that may have been because the OTU was developing and some of the writers were trying to ensure possible interpretations fitted into that...

For a Traveller GM perspective, worlds are the detailed level. Generate a subsector, and start the players off on one of the worlds in it, and as they go to new planets add details to those with Starports, NPCs, organisations, possibly other sites of importance in the system, and I only bother...

To the other Traveller suggestions, Deepnight Revelation is the newest Mongoose Traveller 2e campaign set, even larger than Pirates of Drinax. It's a (very) long range exploration mission on the equivalent to a heavy cruiser, far beyond Charted Space. And despite me having previously been really...

Given how hard it is to define OSR, defining an opposite to OSR seems quite ambitious. Although if you take the most basic attitude, one supported by what nearly all of the 11st wave of OSR products being clones of old versions of D&D, then the opposites of OSR are 3rd and 4th edition D&D as...

Still not meeting in person, so we're staying with Barbarians of Lemuria again. I have a Runequest: Adventures in Glorantha game ready to go, but that'll only start once we're meeting in person again. Whenever that is.

One piece of advice from a Traveller GM, I wouldn't start with Pirates of Drinax, though it's a super campaign with a more experienced group. There's some neat adventures in the JTAS series and some of the individual adventures that make a much better introduction to the game. Of course if...

Traveller. Coriolis, a couple of adventures. We've played Space: 1889 (sorta-Sf) a couple of years ago, might again.

So it seems the argument between D&D as Simulationist and D&D as Gamist has been won hands down by the preference of the majority for a Gamist approach. I wonder if that'll stop denunciation of elements (such as the Bo9S or much of 4e) as being elements that don't fit into D&D's simulationist...