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Let me clarify what I said; I didn't mean that the D&D ruleset has no flavour of its own. It does have some flavour, it just isn't very strong and is easily ignored; like vanilla. What I was trying to say was that D&D is USED as the generic Fantasy ruleset for people to create homebrew...

You could easily design a combat system that was about stripping away your opponents defences (in terms of position, reach, footwork angle of armour) without putting yourself at risk as this is actually how a real swordsman would fight. Then 1 or 2 clean hits to kill/incapacitate would be...

Back on topic; I can't separate the question of "what will D&D become?" from the question "what is the core strength of the game?" For me D&D has always been the "generic" fantasy RPG. It is the vanilla canvas that we can use to adjudicate any game we could recognise as "fantasy" and make it...

Oh I think the speculation about 5E has a more basic cause than that! When someone is thirsty, they look forward to the next drink. Many people find that 4E does not quench their thirst and look forward to the next incarnation in the hope of something better. I am not sure I agree with the...

I think that this thread would be better prefaced by saying that "many people don't like what HP represent" rather than lets get rid of them, though the thread has stimulated some interesting thoughts already. I have never liked HP because it was never clear exactly what they represented at...

I would design the damage/healing system so that it can work for two different paradigms at once; the cinematic, arse-kicking fast healing one and a realistic, nasty and gritty one where healing is rare. I would keep HP but redfine them to mean actual physical harm, not some mixture of morale...

Thasmodius; I am basing my comments on some of Tolkien's own writings to his son Christopher about some of the themes in his book. I know he shows martial virtue and respected this, but this was because he was being true to the ancient tradition he was writing about. Your last post shows that...

Grimstaff; cast your mind the the following scenes and you will see what I mean; Theodan King has just cast off the power of Saruman and is about to kill Grima Wormtongue when Aragorn prevents him saying "enough men have died on his account" or something similar. Grima is allowed to leave...

Apoptosis; I would say you can't play a Tolkienesque game without the themes because I tried many times as DM when I was younger and the players just trample over everything because they bring the assumptions of "normal RPGs" over. If the system rewards this behaviour then it only magnifies the...

Thasmodious; Tolkien does indeed show that bravery and valour are often rewarded but the situations you describe are all based upon the characters trying to AVOID slaying. When they meet the Worgs, they are just trying to escape the Goblins but are cornered, and the same in Moria. Of course...

The Decipher game is based upon a series of assumptions that are very compatible with Tolkien's vision of LotR; i.e. that the characters are heroes. Not in the sense that D&D means, because according to D&D heroes, are "badasses" who go around killing monsters to gain wealth. Tolkien's idea...

I think 4e (and D&D in general) would be a woeful mismatch to LoTR; much as MERP was (I played lots of MERP years ago and it was a great game but a poor window for exploring Tolkien's worlds). D&D is almost the anti-thesis of Tolkien; Gygax HATED Tolkien and was a fan of pulp Fantasy and only...

Justanobody; Stonehenge dates from the bronze age and the druids were an iron age people. There is about a 2000 year difference in timescale and a fundamentally different technology and culture. The modern "Druids" claim that stonehenge is drudic in origin but then they also claim that their...

Cam; I have read alot of Peter Berrisford Ellis' books on the Brehon and have never come across any reference to them having a Druidic connection. Where did you hear this as I would be interested in exploring such a link?

HP have always represented intangibles; there was even a Dragon or White Dwarf article in the late 1980s talking about how HP should not be used if a character was immobilised or incapacitated and that CON damage was more appropriate in this situation, to reflect how lethal such a situation...

What other people have said on this thread is accurate; who the Druids were and what they believed is lost to us. The Romans destroyed them and we only have Roman accounts of them left. All the "pagan" stuff out there was made up, like things like ley-lines, by groups of slightly strange...

This discussion is interesting, albeit a little too heated. My own experiences of roleplaying chime with what a few others have said. I first played RPGs in the early 80s to about 1989. I have never seen as many people playing roleplaying games as then. There were the game books in book...

How do we make the Mega-dungeon viable in 4E? Resource management is no longer such a source of tension, so how to stop the PCs thinking like a group of CRPGers; that every room is there to be cleared? I want to put the tension back into situations where the PCs must manage sustained RISK...

And to chime in with Merric et al; I NEVER allow my dead characters to be raised when I play. Death is death, even if the DM killed me as a result of a bad rules call (has happened once already). So this is one campaign, at level 5-6 and I have already had 3 characters.I am LOVING it, because...

Just read some of this (lengthy) discussion and would like to say that I understand both positions because I have DMed/played in both types of campaigns, although we were not sophisticated enough to have death flags; just the implicit knowledge that a certain DM would avoid killing us. I don't...