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Yes, it does, if (naturally) one understands it. The greater burden falls to me, but communication is a team effort -- so some effort in good faith on your part (taking on faith that there indeed is a sensible proposition I am trying to convey) is necessary. So it is when someone thinks he can...

No, the only reason you have this problem at all is because you insist on interactions that "arise from the mechanics" instead of just the opposite (which has been the mainstay of RPGs from the start). Get agreement first on what is actually being done, and on what the relevant considerations...

If you really do agree 100%, then obviously you are NOT arguing that we should give a hoot about Power #54(b) for its own sake. You are agreeing with me that we should be concerned with the actual physical process undertaken and its consequences for the snake. The emerging 4e philosophy...

With 2d6, the difference between 41.67% (8+) and 100% (2+) is only 6 points. With 1d20, from 40% (13+) to 100% (1+) is 12 points. That's twice as many "level ups" for a skill rating or other factor.

As a player in a role-playing game, I am here to play my role -- not to play God with the whole world! If I do not like some aspect of that world, that is but a little annoyance next to not liking to get dragged out of my role-playing to dictate that a tiger I have (via my persona) perceived is...

It's the DM's job to moderate the game so that everyone can have fun -- not to let one player dictate contentiously for his own fun at everyone else's expense. As usual, it astounds me to contemplate the relationships and motives you seem to consider normative. If the players as a body...

The star-hopping is really -- as in "Star Trek" -- a convenient framing device for all sorts of situations. I think GDW early on bruited the rules set's flexible potential. Back before GURPS, it was the prime candidate mentioned in a magazine article about adventures crossing alternate...

As somebody has already pointed out, the whole business about opponents "of your level" getting more powerful more rapidly and so making PC death more likely involves a set of peculiar assumptions. Most specifically, they are peculiar to a way that many people play 3e and 4e D&D. My assumption...

Traveller does not have character levels (although 4-year terms both prior to and during play serve as a rough gauge). It has skill levels, though, and those can (along with ability scores serving as hit points) get stronger in play. Traveller characters can also attain financial wealth...

For 1st ed. AD&D, I use the material provided in the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Still using the old Books and Supplements here, as I have 'em. The Far Future Enterprises reprints and/or CD might deliver more "bang for buck" for some people than the Mongoose version, but I would consider the latter if I were in the market. The Mongoose products I have seen do not fit the...

How is an opinion on a matter of taste 'discredited' or "demonstrably false"? You can like railroading as much as you please, and you can also dig disco, but there's no priority to your preference.

In OD&D and 1st ed. AD&D, this is basically what happens to magic-users. Versus other magic-users, the ability to dish out hurt increases more rapidly than the ability to take it (especially from 11th level on, with another jump from 16th in OD&D or 21st in AD&D). Monsters and other characters...

There's also -- the rule of "roll something else versus something else" (e.g., damage dice versus damage reduction and hit points) -- and the rule of "either you can do it or you can't" (e.g., either you have Combat Reflexes and get additional attacks of opportunity equal to your Dexterity...

The rules tell me (provisionally) the same thing, and this is not contrary to reason. I say "provisionally", because (just for instance) gauntlets of dexterity can make up for want of the special training entailed. This understanding that picking locks is a special ability is assumed as part of...

The sword of sharpness (DMG p. 166) says otherwise, but let us set it aside. Trolls do not stop regenerating when they are hors de combat, and one can certainly cut up unresisting objects -- except in lumin's world, in which the absence of a special rule presumably prohibits not only carving...

Well, at least you're not excised.

Balesir can speak for himself, of course, but all I am seeing in his argument is a petty semantic quibble. Namely, I think his insistence is that "Raven Crowking makes it up" is a 'mechanic'.

From Dungeon Module A4, In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords: Thinking of characters as people, rather than solely "in terms of their powers and possessions" had always been part of the fundamental process of role-playing defining the nature of the game. The indications I have seen are not that...

Lumin, you seem completely clueless as to what Gary wanted to "tighten up" -- which was no secret, nor had been for years, and most who were into the game back in the day should be able to guess it in one try -- and quite oblivious to the degree to which AD&D was a collation of D&D material...