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It does seem though as if this statement is deliberately intended to make his critics angry. I agree that Gygax didn't care if he made people mad for sure or if people thought he was an old sexist male chauvinist pig. It does seem like this was spouted off in anger. This is Frank Mentzger's...

I'm sure there are things in places in the old books that make people wince today. The question is -- was Gary a typical man of his times or was he especially egregious? I think WOTC though did more damage than good with their disclaimers all over the place. I am glad they didn't rewrite...

We are getting off the subject a bit but one thing to realize. When you compare national currencies the trade imbalance can skew on the ground value. There are people who live on incomes like 20 dollars a month but they aren't spending dollars. They are spending their devalued currency but...

There is a lot of like about ACKS for sure.

Well one of the dangers is assuming all prices in a campaign are relationally the same as they are today or in any other particular period in history. For example, in the 70's salmon was fairly expensive and you might have it on occasion but often when we had something like "salmon cakes" we...

I think the way some of you have used the term Adventure is pretty broad. So I will go with the flow... 1. There are "encounters (both social and combat)" that just evolve from the setting. This is inevitable if you have a great set of NPCs and an immersive well designed world. 2. There are...

Absolutely. I don't doubt a lot of it is validation. I think I was into that in the days leading up to 5e 2014. At this stage, I really have given up on WOTC. I just like to talk game design so I show up here sometimes. I don't really care what people play but I will defend my own style if...

Well in a modular system that was truly designed to fit all styles, you have to make the stuff people debate a module that you can use or not use. I was hopeful that the champion would suffice but they baked a bunch of stuff into the core fighter and thus you have to house rule left and right...

All you had to use was a raise dead and not a resurrection.

Well I think the playstyle that likes rules as physics and dislikes metagame mechanics has been abandoned. It used to be the mainstream of D&D. I do think WOTC knows how to make money for sure. That is why I don't think they will abandon their approach. Having the name though really helps...

Sure. It is an outside WOTC. I was making the point that a flexible enough game system in theory could support many playstyles and people could write books (people, companies, whatever) that nailed down how to use those rules for their style. As DM, I do exactly that with my session 0...

I collected a lot of DCC modules back when they were made for older editions of D&D and 3e.

I was thinking of how many playstyles now exist side by side in D&D. And more than one is pretty popular. Often they are not compatible. Often people in a particular area don't even realize the other styles exist. How can the designers of a DMG go very deep when whatever the direction they...

I agree with everything Imaro said. I would say that a published setting can help a new DM but in the long run being able to create a setting is a valuable skill. I know of at least one game that died because the entire group was new and after the initial module which came with the game, the...

One of the reasons we can't have nice things ;) is that big corporations need a certain amount of profit for each endeaver and profitable isn't enough. Dragon and Dungeon under Paizo was profitable. Paizo wasn't wanting to stop publication. They were forced to do so. So while I agree with all...

At game start, when the idea is presented to potential players, they have zero invested. The DM as months invested. So I'm not going to work making something that doesn't resonate with me. I'm going to make a setting, probably different from my last one, that resonates with me because that...

What is interesting about this post is perhaps it has given me an insight. A lot of players are seeking games online. Realize that in time all the bad DMs go online because they've alienated everyone locally. The good DMs go online sometimes but often they are happy because they have local...

While my games do have adventures which are dungeon-like. There is also a lot of world around those adventures and a lot of interaction with that world. Adventures are fun and they provide income but often there are other things going on in the world that the PCs get involved with as they grow...

It works like the real world. The player experiences the world through his senses and makes choices based on those stimuli. He can modify the world in modest ways. He can turn left or turn right on the road. He can't imagine a third road though that doesn't exist. When I enter a...

I'm not your slave. I am not running a game that is a lousy experience for me. I'm working up a campaign and proposing it to people and those people opt in or opt out. See we both operate in the same way to suss out who we want to DM with which is the way it should be. I will likely be...