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Do what you will is the whole of the law for your game. Otherwise, I am sorry but -- like football or figure skating or whatever else you might undertake to dislike -- it's not about you. The people who like it are as entitled to it as you are to the things that you like. Live and let live (or...

That's a Grand Canyon of a culture gap. I expect that RC, like me, grew up playing games of skill as well as chance. I'm not even talking wide-open wargame / proto-role-playing-game campaigns like the galactic conquest game some friends and I made up for ourselves before we encountered D&D. I...

The actual statements there are unanimously positive, not negative: The "logic" that turns the positive statements into negative ones is of the same absolutist order as reasoning that because thieves can remove small trap devices with a dice roll, there is (barring magic) no other way to deal...

I don't think so. I think he assumes that a mismatch between proclaimed ends and what actually results indicates a lack of understanding of the means that one has screwed around with and screwed up. Tunnels and Trolls disagreed. RuneQuest disagreed. 4e disagreed. 3e was incoherent. Arnesonian...

Next topic: Wizards, Yea or Nay? In 1st ed. AD&D, prismatic spray is a 7th-level illusionist spell, castable (other than from a scroll, wand, etc.) only by a character of at least 14th level. To replace the full allotment of spells requires 10 hours of rest and 17 hours of memorization: a total...

Says what rule, where? It's trivial for you to set up even a "don't save, just die" certain death situation if that's what you want. So, go ahead and knock yourself out as long as you can find players to put up with that. That is no argument at all against the rest of us running what we...

It is a "new school" in itself to me, even if not as new as some others. Some "mechanical" rules sets were designed with it in mind, and some other customs tend to go along with it. For instance, I think my current AD&D 2e DM would have a heck of a time trying to run his Plot R.R. without the...

It's a foetid mire for those who insist that everyone must find the same things fun or non-fun. In the practice of normal human beings carrying on a friendly conversation about a social engagement, we do not need to define fun. We just need to talk about how things are going. That depends on...

That depends on the game, doesn't it? The reason to play a game like that is because we find it fun. We are still on the same team when it comes to the ultimate goal of having fun. People who think the GM's job is to make it hard for the players to have fun, or vice-versa, are seriously mixed...

It fell before the onslaught of a new demographic. I don't know, man. Maybe we could mount a counter-invasion of Exalted, but besides two wrongs not making a right I think we are outnumbered. Anyhow, it does not require something like the Belgariad as a basis. If the intent is to copy the...

You know his S.O.P.. You have played into it with your emphasis. THAT is what needs emphasis, as well as the context in which the probability makes sense. The bottom line is that Hussar wants something else, a whole different context.

Yes. The more you go down that path, the more it looks as if you are holding up the same yardstick of expectations as Hussar, and merely arguing over how poorly certain corner cases measure up. For that matter, Hussar wrote that he really was not interested in even that standard. His repeated...

It is not the GM's responsibility to care more about my life than I do. Neither is it my responsibility to care more about the game than does the GM, who has invested additional time and energy in preparation and must deal not only with me but with the other players. The GM cannot read my mind...

Probably your own post also seemed clear to you, but it was a bit of work for me to untangle. "It is not the difference between 'I search the altar' and 'I search the room'" means on the face of it just the opposite of what I eventually worked out! That difference was THE KEY. The preceding...

Erm... no. Without having seen the Authoritative Official Definition of Magic Language in the first place, I could hardly willfully misinterpret it! Now, what I make of this is that you take "I search X" to mean a sweeping commitment to searching every thing within X that could be searched, by...

TSR may have got cash for them before you got a chance to see them. In the game trade, it works like this: Publisher -> Distributor -> Retailer -> Customer It can even work like this: 1) Publisher floats product ideas to distributor 2) Distributor solicits orders from retailers 3)...

Hussar, is it really so much easier for you to hit people with such hyperbole? It is easier to make -- or to argue against -- a point by actually addressing that point. What you very often do instead is what you have done here. Instead of addressing a statement, you misrepresent it. The...

I call that cruel and unusual! So those were four hours of life that you chose to spend as is best in your opinion. I did not write "all the details". I wrote "the whole story". I meant what you suggested in your statement. I agree that it ought to have been handled like that. I agree that the...

Are you seriously under the misapprehension that I said anything to the contrary?

There is probably more profit to be made from one "dungeon module" that sells 100,000 copies than from 10 modules that sell 10,000 copies each. If the difference in profit per unit were, say, 2:1, then it could be a wash if your 10-module line doubled sales to 20,000 each. However, that seems...