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I did some research and talked to a few people since yesterday, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that the treatment of this subject by these books is bad news. The comparison to Star Wars are, frankly, silly. The potentially negative interactions in Star Wars that you describe center on...

I haven't read them, nor has my wife, so I have no direct experience. Best I've got is a female friend who described the movie version of the guy as "Creepier than Anakin in Clones." That's pretty creepy.

Purely as a player... You don't. The guy writing the game might. He wants it to be fun for new players and experienced players. He wants to obviate the rough edges some DMs might have to ensure the group wants to play again. Also, what if you're someone who changes groups a number of times...

Heh. The battery issue does bug me. Luckily, they're putting money into that tech in a few countries, so improvements are coming down the pipeline quickly. Batteries that can be recharged over and over again forever are theoretically quite possible. We'll see how they do and if they're...

Not at all. Human beings will always alter the conditions. That is our nature. But I think the latter day way of balancing works better for me. I think the experience from table to table is more consistent. For me and the people I played with, 1e/2e simply put too many decisions that...

Ah, but only the right kind of game play creates it. Small deviations create huge balance flubs. A butterfly flaps its wings and an entire campaign goes down the tubes. I never met a group that managed a balanced 1e/2e game in half a dozen years of trying.

But his game was so very clearly not balanced that way in and of itself. He might have intended for the DM to make that happen, but since a DM was not included in any box set I ever saw, relying on DM adjudication was a fools errand. Incidentally, the vision of some sort of Gygaxian Mini-me...

I am learning a shocking amount about mining practice as a result of this. It would be fun if it wasn't so depressing. I will concede readily and happily that mining is screwed up to Hades and back, probably more so than paper. We probably need to rein in both, but as a consumer of limited...

I am frequently bored to tears by literal interpretations of a text. My imagination can do that without any help whatsoever, thanks. And it's been done time and time again with Holmes already, occasionally well. I look forward to some new interpretation. RDJ also helps allay fears in this...

I'll concede that it's a little gray. But do a quick count of how many gold mines there are compared to how many places make or recycle paper. Orders of magnitude in difference. Even if they produce only a tenth the waste per location, if there are thousands more of them doing it, it adds up...

Because they weren't alive last time there was an H1N1 around. Most of them still live, unless they have respiratory pre-existing conditions. And even them most of them still live. It's seriously not much worse than regular flu, even if you've never been exposed to an H1N1. Half the students...

Fair enough. I'd love to hear some justification from an experienced perspective for strength as intimidation, then. Honestly, I don't know anyone with a lot of skill in hand-to-hand or melee fighting who would find high strength as relevant as other factors. Sure, it's nice to have, but it's...

Actually, this one is. The recycling tech for most of those metals is cleaner than paper and the volume is far less. This is actually a case of new tech being less polluting than old tech. That's actually very common, but we'd like to pretend that pollution is a new problem. Paper and...

That decision on the H1N1 vaccine is actually the reasonable position, biologically. It's the flu. I had it, my wife had it. Had a crappy week as a result, but we're still here. Healthy young adults are not in much danger, and burning a few sick days is no big deal if you have reasonable...

The old LCD e-readers were a pain in the eyes, but not with e-ink, no. Looks just like a book, only no color yet. I love the look and feel of a book, but I saw one of those demos in a Barnes and Noble and I'm a convert. Besides... Paper is an industry that needs to die. Even the recycling of...

The assumption I meant is that strength would be an effective intimidating factor to a skilled opponent. It would not. If I'm sizing someone up, the sheer musculature of the guy is not really on the list. How he carries his shoulders and his foot positions matter WAY more, for example. Where...

I'm not terribly familiar with LFG, but this isn't the first time I remember a controversy on the internet about DragonCon. Wasn't there a big brouhaha a couple years ago? Scheduling or something? Being needlessly jerky twice could be a coincidence, but a third time will definitely establish...

EDIT: Pawsplay wins at timely posting. I think you have a core assumption slightly out of place. Strength isn't inherently scary. Fighting skill is. I'm a big guy with a bare minimum of martial arts background. I certainly have less fighting experience than the average person/humanoid who...

Which works well. Even without Cha, they're going to intimidate the heck out of lower level foes in 4e. But foes around their skill level will be less impressed. The high Cha character can convince you that, though he appears the same as you or even weaker than you, he is actually incredibly...

You should dig it up and play it, BOZ. It is still the best D&D based video game very made (IMO), and despite some clunkiness in the later chapters, it is still in my top 5 games of all time.