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Too few HP for 4e?

The problem really has to do with the amount of difference among the games, not only in mechanisms but in expectations. #1: The game with the bigger stat blocks gets served better. Sure, I could use a Goodman Games 3e scenario for old D&D -- but I don't want to pay for all those wasted pages...

Basically, Hit Dice/Levels started out (in Chainmail, progenitor of D&D) as so many man-equivalent "lives". Expanding those to multiple hit points allowed both for very powerful attacks (e.g., giants dealing 2 dice of damage or more) and for those with very little likelihood of being deadly...

Mainly, it's just another complication -- basically functioning simply as another pile of hit points to plow through, but implemented not so simply. It prolongs what had already become (for my taste) too time consuming.

Yes, it does. It is possible for there to be many answers to that question, including the radical, "He should not." I gave an answer to the question that was directly asked, which was a why question.

Because it's the player who is able actually to enjoy playing a game.

A smaller scenario might be better than a big dungeon if it's a matter of all new players and a short session. With BFRPG, you aren't likely to tie up an hour in a single fight or the like, so "smaller" needn't be so small as five rooms. However, a situation that can reach some sort of...

Oh, I don't know. Maybe...

What does happen is what happened in the games in which stuff was actually playtested before publication. Note, however, that the added spell levels in D&D Supplement I were apparently not among those (no PCs of such levels yet). What happens is that people adapt to new situations, following...

Stack up the Hero System supplements on top of that -- then compare side by side with the D&D 3.x corpus and the AD&D 2nd Ed. volumes. (I'm not even counting scenario and setting material.)

The old-old-old-style '''mega"dungeon (a la the description in the original D&D booklets) is more than just a conventional edifice. Its function is more like the Enterprise in Star Trek or the gate in Stargate: a way to bring in whatever elements -- whatever worlds of adventure -- may be...

In the late '70s and early '80s in my Northern California town, there was a gathering on Saturdays in a building at the Junior College. There were also university clubs all over the country. In Portland, Oregon, later in that decade, I found a club that rented rooms in a building. Back in...

TSR's "FASERIP" Marvel Super Heroes is very light (less so with Advanced), and captures the feel of its subject, well, marvelously. There's a "retro clone" called Four Colors (4C) that naturally lacks all the trademarked Marvel references. Villains & Vigilantes is sort of like old TSR D&D...

RPGs originated as tools for doing just the opposite of telling a story. All the "game stuff" of chance and choice serves the purpose of confounding determinism, of fostering unpredictability. The vast range of possible courses of events is the fulcrum of interest. Gamers invented the genre as...

"Exploring what it means to be human", etc.: Show me, don't tell me. Man, I wouldn't even pick up a novel that had to spell out its "great theme" as if it were a schoolboy's essay! Why would I want a game like that? YMMV, I guess. Instead of aping a plot line, I would rather unpack a story for...

Fleshed-out NPCs. Dungeon inhabitants should have relationships, goals and occupations, just like other beings. Alignment is one potential source of factions, but there should be other issues as well. When you've got a lot of players, their undertakings tend to "take on a life of their own"...

It's difficult for people determined to make it difficult. Back in the day, we came up with a name for those: ''rules lawyers". If a role-playing game were so limited that an encyclopedic rule book undebateably covered every eventuality, then the rules lawyer would make a reasonable argument for...

Make what you will out of conjured iron, conjurers can dispel as well! The trouble with all this hyperbolic hypothesizing is people assuming that there "ought to be" a bunch of characters chomping at the bit to do thus or so when the players themselves can't be arsed. Evidence:1...

I think the kind of general situational-background theme Janx emphasized works better for an RPG than pushing a "moral of the story" literary theme. How would you ensure a story with such a particular message? How would that add to, rather than detract from the fun of the game? In my...

Years ago, Iron Crown Enterprises put out a Mythic Greece book (by Aaron Allston, IIRC) that featured the scheme of one central demigod with "supporting cast" companions. I don't recall there being a whole lot of advice about this, but it might be worth a look. Allston's Strike Force book for...