Search results

I just looked in my 1st and 2nd (Chaosium) edition and 3rd (Avalon Hill) edition books, and did not find that.

Lost Soul: I don't recall ever having the problem with a D&D wilderness expedition. However, I once had a single player waffling badly in a Traveller scenario with longer-scale turns. The last resort is just the same as in any game: a turn is a turn, and when it's you're turn it's time to make...

If they are still new to this referee's campaign, they may even be basing their responses on habits ingrained by other refs. Zhaleskra seems to be taking a gradual approach, which may ease the transition from a more to a less linear setup.

Even without an enforced plot line, you can have some assurance of certain matters coming to a head if you set up the initial situation strategically. Any old hand at wargames will understand how the combination of objectives, terrain and initial disposition of forces can paint in broad strokes...

That's one way to open up a bit something that remains essentially event-ordered. An old-style dungeon (or wilderness, or town) is generally not -- except in a solo scenario such as the many for Tunnels & Trolls -- modeled as a sequence of events, even with branches, that one can map in...

Real-world time may more often correspond to in-game time in old D&D. One-minute combat rounds often take about a minute to resolve, for instance. It is also possible for 3 exploration turns (30 minutes) of moves to take very little time to describe. Yet, spells and torches run down in...

Here are some techniques going back to the early years of D & D: 1) The Objective -- Each expedition has some goal. It might be to map an area, to explore so far beyond a secret passage or flight of stairs, to carry out a plan of attack against some monsters, or what have you. The prime...

King Arthur Pendragon has Battle rules that do that.

I like different rules sets for different subjects and different treatments of subjects. The abstraction of a DBA variant such as HotT delivers a thoroughly different experience from Swords & Spells or Chivalry & Sorcery or Battle System or Rules According to Ral (each of which has its own...

Lately, I have been limiting myself to just one group that was meeting just once a month (now moved up to twice). We have gone from Original D&D to (nominally) 2nd Ed. AD&D to 3.5e D&D, each a different DM's game. We have also played a number of other games together, from Monopoly to Chez...

1. Since 1976 2. Probably -- I'm guessing -- about half of all published commercially (stand-alone, not in magazines) 1975-1984, maybe about a third of those published 1985-89 (although from 1987 I at least looked through almost all the major releases). Just a drop in the ocean published...

Zenobia - alternate-historical and monstrous and magical Near East circa 260 A.D.. Castle Falkenstein - a Victorian Age enlivened with Faerie and the trappings of scientific romances

It isn't as if "good" is the only alternative to "hackneyed". It most definitely is not the case that what a critic calls "hackneyed" is necessarily what the public calls "not good" -- which is, as a matter of fact, the point actually at hand. Putting it even more bluntly, the hackneyed is...

Keep the excitement level high. Put action and drama first, at the expense (if need be) of anything threatening to dull the players' engagement. Be especially wary of interrupting a thrilling adventure in order to carry out a time-consuming lookup and application of dry rules. Intellectual...

The biggest influence on making it mainstream was making it a genre.

I mentioned a few posts ago the fellow who does not want to be challenged. For him, there simply is no question of "becoming strong and powerful far too quickly". It is not "an undesirable direction" that will have him "ending up with a short-lived campaign" out of boredom. The really...

Fifth Element, that you may happen to prefer Hopscotch does not by any logical stretch make advice on how to play Baseball wrong for people who want to play Baseball! It is an unfortunate state of affairs that some people are very contentiously invested in replacing "Dungeons & Dragons" -- not...

1979. How can you miss something so obvious as that Gary was talking about playing his game -- ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS -- not about playing a Ron Edwards or Vincent Baker game? I think the actual bit of advice actually in question, though, is probably not just applicable to their games but...

The only sacred cows on the chopping block from my perspective are your favored fads and fallacies. Ignorance of nonsensical or false claims and overbearing ideologies is hardly an impediment to offering sound advice from actual experience! Your advice that's great for playing some other game...

Are the implications -- that it is easier because the snake is indisposed? or -- that it is harder because the back is not visible?