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So what do people think of R&PL? Since it seemed to place well in the Ennies list, I thought that I'd give a few quick thoughts from my reading of it. SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!! The GOOD The customs and culture of the world. It is amazing and captures the feeling of fairy tale...

Agree. The first two things I played in 5E were a Gnome barbarian and a human fighter. Both have been surprisingly effective and fun. And the fighter is a Champion, which I worried would be too limited. I was wrong about that.

Magic, in general, has been improved. Magic items are optional. It's hard to build up a ton of buffs. Spellcasters have a lot of flexibility. The lack of scaling spell power (except for cantrips) by level makes casters a lot less exponential in power and makes the high level slots precious...

That is pretty wise. You never know the whole story of what is or is not happening, and something that looks reckless could be completely different in the context of non-public information

Never managed to play it, but the low magic definitely seemed to make it easy to model the game world rather heavily on history. And there were some very good "in world" explanations for monsters and orcs. Definitely on my bucket list to actually try it out one day.

At the very least it would be great publicity for the game. How many people became interested in fantasy from Game of Thrones or the Fellowship of the Ring. Something neat aimed at the teen market has a chance, and (over the life of the game) some neat stories are bouncing around the D&D universe.

Symmetry, for the sake of symmetry, is a great way to complicate game design. On the other hand, there is something rather nice about making level 3 the capstone level for the basic game (so the really cool goodies being there isn't bad design at all). Making a war cleric wait til level 3...

It is funny, few years back this was my favorite web site. But somehow the conversation seems to have dried up and I am finding it hard to find threads that really grab my interest. The thing that used to grab my attention was the sharp analysis and the lively discussion of game theory...

I have been skeptical that we will get this ever since they posted the PDF. I would like either Bo9S or PHB2, especially the latter.

Definitely read the news

Yes, that was my instinct as well. Heck, the open-ended nature of the attack roles is pretty mimicked with a d20 system. I do think the critical system (which is based on a small chance of dreadful outcomes) would need to be completely rethought in a d20 version. But GURPS manages very...

It does allow for the classes to be balanced with racial abilities and disadvantages included. I don't think that was actually done all that well in the original material, but it is a nice alternative to trying to balance blends.

Surprising to hear the story about TSR being in a small town from Sean Reynolds. I never pictured how different things would be when you are in small tourist town: both the good and the bad.

It was amazing just how much interest it drew. I was very impressed.

There is an implicit idea in Middle Earth that magic has a price and should not be abused. But this sort of subtle magic system is hard to model. Ironically, Mage did a decent job, despite the magical effects being completely unsuited for the setting.

It is all about what you want to reward. If the play experience is intrinsically rewarding, that makes XP less important. But putting a lot of thought into what makes a character level is worth it because this is a key way of making a player motivated to accomplish things. There are...

I own the original Serenity game and would be interested to see what they did with the revised version

The Rules Cyclopedia (which counts as an older edition of D&D) had explicit rules for introducing higher level player characters (which I recall as I quite liked them). So the explicit requirement to start over at first level isn't part of all older editions.

I have been enjoying the new look & feel of ENWorld as well as the generally faster performance. It convinced me to go back to being a paid subscriber and I hope it sticks around for a while.

I GMed a gunslinger in a Paizo adventure path and it seemed relatively balanced. It was in the same party as a very optimized fighter and the two seemed to make relatively comparable contributions in combat.