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Having just finished a Dance with Dragons, I am leaning more towards LotR. I think the first three Song of Ice and Fire books are phenomenal and then fame started to catch up with GRRMartin and allowed him to push his editor over. They got real wordy real fast. That isn't to say that LotR isn't...

As a kid, my family focused on travel despite being of very moderate means. The rest of my gaming group's families did not have the same focus. I have an early memory of describing a thousand foot cliff shortly after visiting the Grand Canyon (and it's mile long drops)and my players being...

This general type of rebuttal comes up pretty often--I'm paraphrasing here, but people often argue that a resourceful GM using the rules to their fullest extent wouldn't face the problem the new rule intends to address. Well, of course that's the case. There's no limit to the awesomeness that...

Here's my take on "the why" of this system. I think in earlier versions of many games there weren't enough rules to resolve most things and as a result player immersion followed very naturally. The GM described a dark hallway and asked what the player did. The player grasped at the air, trying...

I don't 100% get the objective. Is this ability to turn? speed? some combination of the two? A dirt bike is probably the most maneuverable thing on your list but it is in the middle of the pack. Maybe it would help if you told us what you'd do with the table later.

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but that wasn't my point... Let me try again. This variant makes it easy to set a DC, but it doesn't help you know if it was a *good* DC. In older editions it is hard to say if this should be a 17, or a 19, or a 20, but you had a good idea of how different...

I realized an interesting progression. 3e introduced a rich design environment of skill points and DCs. You could simulate anything, but assigning skill points was a pain and assigning DCs could also be challenging. 4e simplified skill points into binary decisions that did away with the first...

Not height but width. Like Turjan pointed out, even cheap Ikea shelves can do the trick. I have an Ikea bookshelf that is 5' by 5' with 4 x 4 shelves at 13" each. The entire unit was about $160 and has withstood a decade of use and shifting without any scrapes. This thing would hold about 300...

I think it has some of the spirit of older editions but not the implementation. I don't think most gamers would be *willing* to go back to the implementation of older editions. Imagine if a new PHB simple used secondary skills and gave the variant that your character was good at whatever you...

One of the problems with what Mearls is describing and his previous articles is his mention of decoupling actions from skills. That is, he previously didn't want actions like Balance to be subordinated to a skill Balance. As soon as you start giving individual actions ranks, if you don't also...

This is only true once your expected damage crosses a certain threshold. Admittedly, that threshold is crossed pretty early in 4e, but they try and account for that by scaling some damage feats. I discussed this phenomenon while working on my homebrew (and also in a half dozen other posts on the...

The same business plan as 7-Minute Abs. Tough market.

I think it is worth pointing out how impressive the contribution of the folks still above Gary are as well. Over 8 months of people working to get Gary XP (deservedly so) and there are still posters hundreds of XP ahead. It is a noteworthy achievement.

I think your instincts are right; fewer categories makes it easier to find something a home. I also better understand your scaling DCs now that you point out this is not a 4e-esque system with built in raises. The last area that I see catching you up is the relationship between # skills and #...

That's pretty darn interesting. A few comments: I'm not sure the DC has to increase for each category. If you think about a system like 4e, there are easy, medium, and difficult settings to a skill. The DCs are then set so that a character has a 65% chance to succeed at a skill of their...

I don't dislike anything, but I'd say that early 3e art was my favorite art direction in D&D. The pictures were clearly fantasy but with an aspect of realism to them. It was really the first time that most art seemed to put thought into the how or why of a character and imply back story by...

I've used most of the common ones above. A few years ago I told all of the players to find an excuse to be linked to a heroic paladin NPC going on an adventure. Someone was his squire, another his nephew, another an envoy from the elvish settlement the NPC was questing on behalf of, and another...

Well, sure, but there is a difference between people as a pronoun referring to an abstract general person and people as a noun referring to all persons. People aren't jerks; persons certainly can be jerks.

I think it is a variation of confirmation bias. Once you've made your pick, you interpret everything after as affirming that decision. You pick 4e, so you see its strength, have fun during the game, and attribute that to 4e. Someone else sticks with 3e, focuses on its strengths, has fun during...

Agree. I never fail to be amazed. The article begins with, "People are asking for specifics, so I'll try. Note, this is a quick idea and I'm a bit out of practice, but here's the general direction I'm headed..." And then the majority of discussion nit picks not the broad strokes of the idea, but...