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I love HeroLab, and use it constantly. Based on that and the tantalizing videos about RealmWorks, I bought it about a year ago. I was excited about it at first, but then made the decision to stop using it when I realized that there was no way for me to pull my data back out of the program...

I have printed rpgs going back to the mid-70s that I can still just pick up and read. Many of them are worth hundreds of dollars now, even though I paid $10-15 for them back then. I can't resell e-books, and the PDF standard will eventually become obsolete. If they were 10% the price of a...

I have not been pleased with the binding on the D&D 5e books. The players handbook I picked up last year had some wavy pages and color ink bleed, as well.

The folks at Paizo took a popular platform that WotC had more or less abandoned and the put out tons of support material for it. It continues to be popular among people who like a lot of "crunchiness" (numbers, character optimization, etc.). In my case, I only started playing it because I had...

In my area, "homebrewing" was the norm back in the 70s and 80s. People would sometimes use modules and such, but most of the DMs I knew generated at least half their own content (at a minimum). As far as the DIY thing goes, what's old is new again. The DIY ethos in general in America was very...

I have always run sandbox-style games, and rarely use charts of any kind. I create the world in detail and seed it with a lot of characters, critters, places, etc. I throw in rumors relating to those things, but I don't push the characters to move towards any particular one, or to pay...

I have always created my own worlds and adventures (and more), from the latter half of the 70s up to now. Pre-made adventures and worlds never interested me. As a DM, half the fun was the creation, and the other half was sharing it with others, via the gaming sessions. Having said that...

To be honest, a lot of of it boils down to not liking the established worlds in D&D and Pathfinder (Golarion, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, etc.). They're just too high-fantasy-stereotypical for my tastes, which sort of ruins fiction about them.

Tor is a great imprint, but I just can't get interested in books based on rpgs. They are rarely as good as regular genre fiction.

I have stopped buying the supplements, as well. They just don't give me enough new stuff to be worth the price. Any given one may give a handful of new feats and a couple of additions to class options, but the other 95% of it just doesn't give me anything useful. I would pay for a "big book...

The statement about how people like Paizo's writing but want the D&D label on things.

I didn't like the D&D novels, either. I just don't like rpg novels.

I couldn't care less about novels. If I want to read fantasy fiction, I'll stick to authors who have the freedom to do interesting things that aren't bound to a standard setting. Things like this lead me to be much less excited about "exciting news coming" teasers in general. Save the hoopla...

I do, too, to be honest. I primarily run sandbox-style games, but even with those you have to come up with things for the characters to encounter if they make certain choices. I make sure that the challenges I spread around the world are varied and take into account the strengths and...

I make sure that there is a wide range of different challenges that provides each player with opportunities to contribute. Fighters generally can't pick locks or sneak around very well, to use your example. In any game session, I rarely have more than one combat encounter, and often don't...

Most fiction novel writers still have day jobs. In science fiction, fantasy, and horror there are a number of well-known authors with numerous books who still have day jobs, too. Writing almost always begins as a hobby, and only eventually becomes a form of income. Even then, it only provides...

All the more reasons to target the underserved genres in the rpg world.

To put this in perspective, the Science Fiction Writer's Association defines a professional rate as no less than 6 cents a word. The Horror Writer's Association defines it as 5 cents.

I'm still very skeptical about the value of the D&D brand when marketing non-TTRPG products to the general public. It hasn't help a lot of value in the past, even during it's golden era. One of the big problems with Morningstar is that the contracting company came in with very specific ideas...

Nothing is overpowered or underpowered in my campaigns. I don't use pre-written adventures or worlds designed by other people. No matter how powerful a character is, (s)he will always be challenged by the encounters, because I design them that way.