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"A game" is sufficient. If you see "a story" in the playing out of any real contest, then that is fine; that is the kind of *emergent* story I enjoy. If "story" is just a euphemism for "rigged game", then count me out. This seems to me very, very far from a subtle distinction. You may prefer...

I think you will find it entirely fair if you address the statements actually made rather than forcing them through Bizarro logic. "No superhero RPGs come packaged with very specific settings" is not among those statements. However Mutant City Blues (or Brave New World or whatever) happens to...

Rounser, I submit that the term is useful precisely to the degree that it is narrow enough actually to mean something. Whatever you choose to make of "sandbox" really makes no difference whatsoever to the practical matters at hand. You might as well huff and puff about how Baseball is "really"...

There are hundreds or thousands of games each narrowed down to its own particular subset of fantasy. The big question is which particular things you want to have in your game, and which ones you want to leave out. The rules set is not the setting, and it is generally to the point of calling...

I find the procedures in 4E games not lacking in whimsies. For example, the flurries of Steel Monsoons, Diamond Blades of Victory, Epic Resurgences, Sneaks of Shadows, and whatnot strike me as about as "serious" as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Again, it's all in the eye of the beholder...

Rounser, you clearly have not understood that post of mine, and maybe did not even read it all. We are unlikely to have a productive conversation via hasty "sound bites".

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the sandbox is simply not a great campaign for a certain sort of player, one with a certain definition of what a "great campaign" is. When your "reluctant hero" gets driven by events out onto the road of Destiny, it is not necessarily the case that...

There is some wisdom. Showing up to play Dungeons & Dragons (as I know it, anyhow), one should not expect to play a role with the objectives of staying far away from dungeons and dragons and cultivating a vegetable garden. Such an unambitious -- or at least homely -- persona would hardly do...

Whimsicality specifically as humorous is a perfectly legitimate usage, but a narrower one than the "strange and bizarre" that I got from MerricB's first post. Whatever sense one intends, it is certainly "in the eye of the beholder". Dave Hargrave -- whose Arduin Grimoire trilogy came out in...

The Sourcebooks got the funny stuff, such as Drop the Rock. Some joker spoiled that with unauthorized commentary in the wrestling rules section of The Fantasy Trip: Advanced Melee (Steve Jackson's precursor to GURPS). Prootwaddles just are not enough for some people.

The Gazetteer line was pretty good for whimsy, but I don't think it held a candle to Glorantha (setting of White Bear & Red Moon and RuneQuest). There was the Jack-O-Bear (remember Greyhawk?), Three Bean Circus, Trollball, and of course (as a friend of mine puts it) "Those damned Ducks!"

If one has in mind old D&D, C&S, Gangbusters, etc., then I think one factor worth noting is that the guys who ran the original campaigns had large numbers of players in them (although not necessarily in any given session). Also, although they might have "same Bat-time, same Bat-place" groups...

Different people mean different things by it, but I reckon most of us are interested chiefly in drawing a distinction from the heavily scripted type of scenario that gets published a lot. The big problem with that approach from my own perspective -- especially when it comes to "D & D" -- is...

Much more than maps: Link to Columbia Games' Hârn page (which apparently includes links to the appropriate sections of RPGNow, etc.): HarnWorld and Harnmaster role playing game RPGNow has (IIRC) a fair bit of old stuff from Judges Guild. City State of the Invincible Overlord, C.S. of the...

Towns of the Outlands from Midkemia Press (direct link to free PDF, ca. 2 MB): http://www.midkemia.com/Towns.pdf Link to Midkemia Press home page: Midkemia Press

Nobody but you and Hussar appears to be expressing that attitude.

I'm not RC, obviously, but I take it as plain by normal English usage that one cannot "meet the gaze" of a subject from whom one is "hidden". A gaze is a long, steady look. "To meet a gaze" is to look at someone while that one looks back. Even more usually, and pretty explicitly in the cases at...

Since "wrong" is just your own opinion, there is no sense in anyone else "proving" it. "Save or die" is intended to restore risk, and that is just what it does. In Chainmail, precursor of D&D and its "Alternative" combat system, normal men needed to score four simultaneous kills against a Hero...

Which is up to whom, pray tell? If you are really determined to hit your players with inescapable doom, then your fixation on methods that permit saving throws can only be a godsend to them!

That's a 1/500 chance on Monster Level X, which gives from a 1/10,000 chance on Dungeon Levels 8-11 to a 1/2,500 chance on Dungeon Levels 16 and deeper. Demon Princes there are 40 times more common, Elder Titans 50 times. Other specimens of Monster Level X include: Beholders Arch-devils Ancient...