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Yeah, this matches my experience. System shock was typically forgotten about as long as nobody mentioned it. "Ok you can do that, but you might die instantly," isn't a particularly good mechanical design for a game. From my experience, there were a lot of rules in AD&D which, during the...

Having looked through the playtest rules (which is linked on the KS page) the system looks fairly heavy. Feels like a blend of PF2e, 13th Age, and maybe a bit of GURPS? There are options or extended rules for everything. But it feels like a lot of complexity. Like you don't just fall. There's...

There's a difference between capitalism and Capitalism. I scroll through this KS, and what stands out to me isn't the kind of game they're trying to make. What stands out to me is how many ways they're trying to sell it to me and how much they're willing to let me pay for it. If it doesn't...

Yeah, this one is extremely over-monetized. I think that's predatory, so it turns me off. Like this is on top of having 7 "tiers" going up to $400. Just no.

"Early backer rewards"? Gross. I don't need more FOMO capitalism.

So, speculative fiction often wants to portray an entirely different set of cultures. It makes a world feel more real and larger. This brings some unusual problems because... Well, the fundamental problem with non-humans is that the creators of the games and stories do not have an example of a...

I think it's important to remember that Gygax's game is the dungeon crawler. The game we turned D&D into after Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods and after Dragonlance is not a game whose morality system is intended or designed to tackle global politics or holy wars. It's just meant to tell...

It was a marketing angle in 2014 when Hasbro execs wanted to shelve the whole thing and the design team had to promise they could get their old player base back from Pathfinder. Their 4e strategy and failed and they needed to draw in all the old players. Today it's at least a little weird to do...

I understood that the 50th anniversary was the primary reason for the whole thing. I remember speculation that there would be an edition drop beginning to wane when One D&D was announced because they waited until August 2022 to announce it. That didn't seem like nearly enough time to do a...

Nah. I know they don't want us to call it 5.5, so I'm calling it 5.24.

I don't hate them. But I don't find them very interesting. The only gnome-specific trope that I really like is the tinker or artificer or mad scientist. And I think goblins do it better as soon as you relax stat bonuses. I think warforged are more interesting when they do it, too. The gnome...

Wait, why would they try to "address" that? That would subvert the themes. The point was that Paul is not a good guy. He's a Duke from off-planet that is mistaken for a messiah by the indigenous population because thousands of years ago a Bene Gesserit left manipulative and false mythologies in...

I wouldn't describe any of that as elements of power gaming. I would call that basic social awareness, paying attention to the other players, and simply having system mastery. To be fair, I've known a lot of TTRPG players that have been lacking in those areas. But I don't think there's anything...

No, I think it requires only one person to have success and convince others that their white room is reasonably fungible. After that it's merely power gaming by concensus. "Ok Google, what are the best spells in 5e D&D?" "Ok Google, how do I do the most damage in 5e D&D?" "OK Google, what are...

That definitely feels like 3e era advice. However, I'm come to find that die rolls slow the game or distract from the play I want to focus on. Yeah, rolling a die is faster than stopping the game to look up a rule. But rolling a die is still kinda slow. Today, I think I prefer this advice from...

Sure, go ahead and dismiss it as a "skill issue." The fact that you can't even articulate a response beyond that tells me everything I need to know about how critically you examine the design of the games you play. Being able to recognize a bad system doesn't mean you're falling prey to it...

It's more of a points of light style setting. The wilderness is vast and untamed. Civilization is holding on, but it's grasp is tenuous. There are many lords but few kings. The elves and dwarves not only distrust each other, but humanity as well. The forests are dark and dangerous. It's like...

I've always heard them called "zines." I've also heard "short form" or "single scenario."

Interesting how the answer is kind of, "Basically, right away."

Record of Lodoss War started as a series of "replay" serialized novels. Basically, a novelization of a B/X campaign in Japan. It was first serialized in the Japanese Comptiq magazine beginning in 1986. It is basically where all of the Japanese fantasy tropes in gaming and media originated. If...