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Default assumption in many of my campaigns is that the vast majority of NPCs use NPC classes. Very few of 'em get statted out, of course. I try to stick to NPC classes as much as possible for the ones I do stat out, and save PC class levels for special occasions, but it doesn't always work out...

Actually, I was in a group with a makeup pretty close to this once. We had a Barbarian, too - Celtic-themed setting, was a lot of fun. In terms of the four iconic roles, it seems to me the Rogue is the hardest to replace, because none of the other (PHB) base classes have Disable Device and Open...

Haven't tried combining them, but from my experience playing and running both this'd be my take: Races - if it's an "anything-goes" world, using all of them should be fine. Otherwise, a mix to taste is OK. So far as redundancies go, I think Giants and Dwarves have kind of a similar campaign...

Seminal free resource for fantasy demographics: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm You might also want to take a look at some of the Harn products. Harn itself (described in the HarnWorld set) is very much a fantasy Britain, lots of demographic info based on English examples. It's a...

Depends entirely on the opinion. I generally don't care about somebody's politics, so that has no effect on my buying habits. I do care about their opinion of their customers; there are some writers and publishers who appear to believe that RPGers are idiots or hopelessly inept or whatever, and...

Generally, I don't give gods stats, and I have some justification as to why they don't (or can't) just do anything they want. Depending on the campaign, demon lords/archdevils either are gods themselves - in which case they have no stats and are similarly constrained - or they're critters with...

I dunno, I thought it was a lot like the first Greyhawk folio, in that it put all the elements of an AU/AE game down on a map for each GM to use and abuse as they see fit. It works pretty well in that respect. There's plenty of plot ideas in the book, just none of them are shoved into the...

If I want to use a system, generally I go with Cry Havoc. That's actually somewhat rare, though, most of the time the outcome of a battle is determined by what the PCs do (or don't do), or it's a background element where I just make up the outcome that works best for what I've got in mind. The...

When I play D&D, I generally go with Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings from the core races. Nobody has ever been much interested in Gnomes so I usually drop them, and I like the Bloodline idea (from Unearthed Arcana) better than the various half-types. I'm OK with civilized humanoids as PC...

Trading is the major hook in many Traveller campaigns, and as such gets lots of attention in the rules. However, I dunno if that'd help you much, because trading and the interstellar economy in Traveller (as in every other space opera setting I've ever been vaguely interested in gaming) are set...

Sure. But the issue that spawned this threadjack is not "is it possible to get a definite answer with this ability", that appears obvious. The issue is "does this ability allow for ambiguity", and I think the answer is a pretty unambiguous yes.

It's a handy short form for an otherwise unwieldy name. Also, in Central and South America it's fairly common for people to use "American" to mean anybody in the Americas.

Not really true - older versions were unbalanced at more levels, they just offloaded balance concerns to the individual group (most often to their DM). It wouldn't be any harder for a DM to make those kinds of changes in 3.X, the major obstacle nowadays is the culture of entitlement that...

In D&D (unlike the real world), experience maps directly to personal power. If you're following the rules as written, the only way to increase your Diplomacy (and Profession: Noble Despot, etc.) skills is to level up, and levelling up in any class (even the NPC classes) means you have more hit...

Sure, but in D&D ability in the skills to actually rule are directly related to personal power since maximum skill rank, number of feats, etc. are governed by level. Not all powerful individuals will have those skills, but those who do will be enormously better at them than non-powerful types...

It's not a direct translation, but the monster level system in 1E was an ancestor of the CR system. IIRC, a monster's level was its hit dice modified by special abilities, which then gave you the base XP calculation. There was even a default method of adjusting XP to party level that was a...

I wondered about the bump. At any rate, for any old-school fans of The Fantasy Trip, Dark City Games has a free ruleset that's basically a TFT rewrite, and sells some adventures and other rule supplements that are compatible with both their new rules and classic Melee/Wizard. I've only tried the...

It's worth noting that "Europe" is a continent while "the Middle East" is a cultural region, so "both" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

I kinda think the personal attacks are more of a problem than the religion.

If adventures aren't my cup of tea, then I'm pretty much SOL with Goodman and Necromancer. So what? That doesn't exclude them from being d20 publishers, it just means I'm not going to buy from them. My personal preferences do not determine whether or not a given company is producing d20 stuff...