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I find myself puzzled by the hyperbole about DMs and players being adversaries. And I'm not talking about the obvious bit. Everyone knows that while a DM may be pretending to be out to murder the PCs, he's really just trying to make the game a fun challenge of the players. If he wanted them...

It sounds like you really dislike the DM now. If so, then leave. Playing with a DM you dislike is a sure damper on the fun, and there's no shortage of games out there. As others have said, it sounds like he's shooting for a gritty game, and that's legit. If you're not okay with gritty then...

Not only is it reasonable, it's very cool. I think your way is a lot more interesting and flavorful than vanilla planeshift.

I don't think Chuck Norris is a good example. If everyone has an equal chance to get the card then the game is balanced in any meaning I have ever seen used. It sounds like your equating "balanced" with "well designed" which isn't a good idea. There are a lot of other important factors to...

Celebrim makes some good points. A related point is that a lot of people seem to think playing a flawed hero is "deeper" because it's more challenging. Not actually true at all. Trying to really be a totally good guy is a lot harder than playing a guy with a dominant flaw. The latter just...

Different types of games are different. Design elements that make a roleplaying game fun, frex, are going to be different than the ones that make storytelling games fun. Conversation will get pretty cumbersome if you always have to list the 83 particular games you're talking about when you're...

The Black Company by Glen Cook. Besides the characters, setting, and magic, which are all cool, it really teaches the idea of "fight smart, not fair," which should be axiom #1 for a D&D PC.

So you don't like his theories. That's legit. That's different than entirely rejecting the idea of having theories about RPGs, which is what it sounded like you were saying before. And practical application is always practical application of our personal ideas of how to make an RPG fun. And...

I totally agree that an RPG needs to offer interesting choices, but that isn't what WIck is talking about in his article. Here it is: He's using "game balance" in its most common meaning, giving player characters equal mechanical power in combat.

I have to disagree with this bit. RPG theory is just people's ideas about how to make RPGs more fun. If we don't think that's worthwhile, then what are we doing on these forums? And having common definitions of words is important. How else are we going to talk about things? It is silly to...

I'm just too lazy to use a lot of words if I can get by with just a few. ;)

I prefer hexes but either is easy enough to use. My main reason for preferring hexes is because counting spaces comes closer to actual distance for hexes than for squares. I kinda like the traditional wargame feel too, takes me back. Most of the "problems" I've heard cited for hexes are...

So I just read read the article and the biggest problem with it is that Wick is making two major points and arguing them as if they're the same thing. Point A is mechanics shouldn't matter in an RPG. I strongly disagree - system matters. Point B is that balance is unimportant - and I agree...

That's not a fallacy, it's simple fact. I've run many, many games with wide power spreads where the players still all had plenty of fun. Or look at games like Ars Magica where party power imbalances are built right into the system. Somehow a lot of people still love and play the game anyway...

You might want to check out "The Land Across," by Gene Wolfe, published last year. It deals a lot with the secret police in a dictatorship of a land where magic exists. Aside from the magic, it's set someplace in the Balkans in the modern world. Th twist is that the secret police are the good...

I've done this. I had a culture in a campaign world that was a blend of Aztecs and Edding's Nyissans, and the Nyissans use drugs for just about anything. The one time a PC personally encountered incense based magic, the incense had a combination of magic and pharmaceutical effects. A merchant...

In addition, 4) Low level play always seems to form the foundation of a character's personality ans style. This way you don't skip it entirely. 5) Characters optimized for the level they start at are stronger than ones that were optimized at each level as you go along. This avoids having...

That's an outstanding point. It's really tough to compete with free, especially when the criminals have negligible production costs. Why even try? Building a better product makes a whole lot of sense. It's an open question whether WotC can do a better product though; I understand they don't...

Since when is being honest and moral unreasonable?

Breasts on reptiles or insects is pretty dumb. It's more of a mild irritation than a bother though.