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I really strongly feel like Rod of Wonder should use a d666 table.

I still see significant value in a unified or a primary design. I don't think there needs to be only one resolution mechanic, but I do think that if you have a bespoke system for everything then it can be difficult to impossible to intuit what a given system is supposed to do or what behavior...

Oh, gross. I didn't back it, but that does explain why the website for the apparently associated company was so weird.

Yeah, it's an explanation, not an excuse. Character generation is complicated since it's sort of like a Traveller life path, and the book focuses on character creation significantly before being a how-to-play manual to teach the game mechanics, or a technical reference guide for use during play...

I think it was over on RPG Pub (which very much dislikes the 2d20 system) where one of the former Modipheus employees posted about that. Essentially, they ran out of time to do final editing and clean-up. Nobody was happy with how the final book came out. They knew it had editing issues and...

I think the major problem you're likely to have is that cosmic horror TTRPGs tend to focus on relatively powerless PCs, while modern dungeon-crawling games tend to focus a lot on combat. Those two things don't mix, typically. You might try something like picking up the Cthulhu Dark Ages setting...

Shadowrun is cool. It's just... you're going to be fighting the system as much as the hypercorps. I don't necessarily think there's anything mathematically wrong with FATE (I don't remember enough to evaluate it) but the issue we had was more that there were kind of less than 7 stereotypes for...

Limiting myself to just what I've played and can sorta remember, which I think is all I can honestly answer, the in-order list from actually genuinely bad to merely intensely frustrating would be: Shadowrun. 1e/2e in my case. Cool setting, bad system. The dice system doesn't scale well, and...

Yes. It was clear to me that Matt really missed the good ideas from 4e D&D, even if he really liked a lot of what 5e has to offer. And that he was tired of hitching his wagon to the... rather bland and undercooked stuff coming out of Seattle. When it became clear that they couldn't really make...

I still call it One D&D, in part because at this point I'm only ever discussing the playtest, and in part because I've kind of given up on what they're doing with it so I haven't really talked about it since they gave up the One D&D moniker. But I will avoid 5e24 because that's...

Overall, I think even if 3e were more like B/X and less like the deep and heavy system it became, then I think the current edition of the game would probably still look very similar. I think the problems would be different, but I think the foundational issues like martial vs caster balance would...

Yeah, that's what I've been seeing, too, although I know I'm several posts behind for want of time and having my home computer get fried. The last post I recall is about them deciding the AD&D style generic universal Wizard that kind of de facto gets to do every kind of magic all the time is an...

One of the things creators have learned about crowdfunding is that while an endless laundry list of stretch goals does increase your funding, it will very quickly turn your project into a totally unmanageable mess. I think this is exactly what happened with the Mighty Number 9 video game...

Yeah, I've heard the same. That's kind of the same thing as the is-ought problem. Yeah, and then you have very old games like Kriegsspiel where the goal of the war game is to pretend that the events of the game are really happening. This one is explicitly trying to be a simulation, but the...

I definitely think there is a cohesive idea behind them. I don't think we would quite be able to so easily identify a TTRPG instead of confusing it for a board game, or a war game, or a party game, or a parlor game. I don't think a GNS style or Big Model style breakdown is useful or meaningful...

What about charades or other parlor games? To me, TTRPGs are hybrid games. They combine Pretend/House and other childhood games of imagination, the Storytelling Game or games of narrative, usually a dice-based Wargame of some kind, and numerous other subgames to create a combined experience...

Sometimes. Sometimes it's just being contrarian. If, for example, there's a discussion forum where people talk about how baloos are bears and how it's wonderous and fun hobby, you may not necessarily be welcome if you want to talk about how baloos are, in fact, not bears at all. Sometimes...

I had back-of-the-napkin gritty rest rules for a campaign I ended up not running: Short rest. Costs an hour or less (whatever is appropriate). Allows the PCs to spend Hit Dice. Medium rest. Costs time as RAW long rest and is limited to one per 24 hours like a 5e RAW long rest. Allows PCs to...

No, that's for those cheese fries with bad chili.

Yeah, but you kind of have to penetrate the business model to get to enough game to feel complete. That's why it can be a little annoying. Like Edge of the Empire has the kind of stuff you'd find on the edge of the galaxy. Bounty hunters, explorers, colonists, smugglers, etc. Age of Rebellion...