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Metagaming interferes with my immersion. A lot of the fun of RPGs for me comes from trying to experience the game from the viewpoint and mental state of my characters. Metagaming is the antithesis of this, making decisions from the viewpoint of the player. If someone at the table is...

My current reading interests are The Lost Fleet books by Jack Campbell, the Thieftaker books by DB Jackson, and anything I can find by John Ringo.

Gil the Arm is very good, but I'd rather see Ringworld. With much of the world already familiar with the Halo game it shouldn't be too big a reach. Yes also, to the Thrawn books. I was hoping episode 7-9 would be based on the books. They're pretty much the only Star Wars books I've enjoyed...

Zelazny's Amber books. It would require an awfully big budget to do it right though.

I'm only familiar with early edition versions of the things, but I gave a few away as DM and they were effectively toys, something the PCs would play with during down time but never used during an actual encounter, except for the guy playing the kender. The reason of course is that the thing is...

To be fair, political discussion worked much better here than other places I've seen on the internet, meaning that there was some actual discussion going on rather than just people CAPS screaming at each other. Still, I'm glad you're ending it. For me, it was a real turn-off from the site...

I saw the previews for Shanarra a few days ago and they looked pretty good ... but I just can't get excited about it. I enjoyed reading the Sword of Shannarra as a child when it first came out, but even as a teen, when I was much less picky about books than I am today, they seemed very blah...

I see the conflict with a simulationist approach, but hit points and semi-Vanican casting are such wacky mechanics already - not simulationist at all - that I don't think your approach makes things much worse. I'd be tempted to take this one step further: hit point recovery and ability are...

Frequently if one can't find an acceptable solution then one is looking at too few options. Here's a better one: the PCs take the disable fighter to whatever type of facility in the campaign world would provide extended medical care, which could be a temple, hostel, asylum, hospital, or...

I find custom built worlds a lot more interesting and fun than kitchen-sink standard D&D and am happy to play in them and abide by whatever the restrictions are.

Two idea. First, you could rework the meaning of hit points. They're not health, they're ablative plot armor. (Okay, you can make a case that that's what they actually are, but let's not have that argument again.) If you reach zero, or whatever "dead" is, you don't die but you're removed from...

I've always been a fan of glass beads for this kind of use, the big flat kind that you buy by the bag at craft stores for home decoration. They look nice and come in a bunch of colors, so you can use different colors to denote the types of enemies in an encounter. Also very cheap.

I did a little bit, a one time adventure, and didn't like it at all. In general I very much dislike mixing fantasy and sf in games, movies, or books. There are a few exceptions though. Andre Norton and Roger Zelazny had some great books that mixed the two.

Neither of the reasons listed. First, I'd rather play a generalist than a specialist. I have more fun with B+ abilities in all situations than with A abilities in one situation and D in the rest. Second, having all of those abilities gives flexibility. Frex, with a fighter/mage I might be...

When you start caring more about what happens to your PC in-game than what happens to your life out of game you have a problem. Or if you find yourself saying things like "No! Blackleaf!" I've only ever seen this become a real problem for one person in my many years of gaming. (And...

I'm with you on this. People are people, management is management, and leadership is leadership, whatever the venue. I've gotten more mileage from my MBA outside of work than in, and the skills I learned as a teenage DM have certainly contributed to my professional success.

I'm sure a lot of factors contribute, but I think the rules are an important one. There has been a shifting focus on group vs individual action across editions. In 1E cooperation was critical. The party's nukes were the magic-user's spells, but he was extremely vulnerable, with spell...

That's not even in the ballpark for enough money to bring a drug to market, which is measured in billions, but it's enough to get started. The way these things usually work is a small company will take development as far as they can, then sell off the drug to a big pharma who will bear the cost...

I can't be too critical if that works for you, but it would be just asking for trouble with the folks I've played with. I take the opposite approach - everyone gets to know what kind of campaign it's going to be before we start up. And I've never had the problem the OP asked about. Some of my...

I wouldn't use a skill challenge. This sound like more a job for old-school let the players solve it by creative thinking play. For a case like this I usually have a couple of solutions in mind, but expect that the players will come up with something workable that I didn't think of. As an...