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This would mean that a STR 8/CHA 20 fighter with gauntlets of ogre power would be much better than a STR 20/CHA 8 fighter is now. The low STR fighter would be able to use the gauntlets plus 4 more magic items, whereas the 20 STR fighter would only get 1 item total. I'd give up 1 point of STR for...

I'm with this. It's interesting, because in the boardgaming community we think about gateway games, simple games that can pull non-gamers into the hobby. You don't throw somebody to the wolves with Eclipse or Agricola for their first gaming experience. Not only are these both $70+ games, but...

Over on reddit, I see about a post every week from someone who has never played a tabletop RPG before and is trying to get a group of friends to try it out. The Internet is great. It increases the likelihood that someone will read about RPGs and be interested (for example, Tabletop's Dragon Age...

With a chance to corrupt your PHB and make the game unplayable.

DEFCON 1 Thanks for the info! I don't know how I missed that. I'm a bit disappointed, but I'll adopt a wait and see approach to see how its handled.

I guess my question is, to cast like a sorcerer, does that mean I'll have to take the sorcerer class with all of that extra sorcerer flavor? I thought lots of different casting options were going to be included in the wizard class. And, if is isn't, then what else is going to be its own class...

Yeah, I find this extremely worrying, as I thought wizards could choose from a variety of spellcasting methodologies. In such a ruleset, there's no need for a separate class whose only difference is how they cast spells. I wonder if they went back on their original plan, and wizards are just...

AHA! This made me think of another aspect of being a paid GM and why people might do it. They might want to play something that isn't very mainstream. How hard might it be for a small group (say 2-3 people) to find someone to run a game of Rifts for them? FISA Star Trek? An entire Paranoia...

I haven't used actual physical books to run a game in years. Maybe around 2009? That includes character creation, prep, and actually running a game. I can't imagine going back to physical books. It just wouldn't be convenient, as I do much of my game prep away from home, and thus my book...

A non-terrible GM is a pretty important element to having a good game. However, in my experience, a game is only as fun as its least fun player. Even if you take a great GM and drop them in a "bad" group (whatever that means, perhaps it means differing expectations, perhaps it means combatative...

Alarm bells would go off! If a group has to pay to get someone to DM for them, there must be something incredibly wrong with this group. In other words, its going to be a pain to deal with. So, I'm not sure I would take the job unless it paid quite a bit of money. Maybe I'd give it a go for one...

I like the Dresden Files take on magic words, runes, and so on. Magic itself, in that setting, doesn't rely on such things. You don't have to say magic words to cast spells. You don't have to draw out runes to create incantations. But, humans innately need those things. To channel magic, to...

You may think its a bad thing, but I like having an option for something heavy on combat. D&D fills a niche for me that is a lot of fun. Suffice to say, I'm perfectly happy with a mostly tactical miniature RPG, especially since D&D has been a really good tactical miniature RPG for at least 15...

An detailed tactical miniature combat module.

There's no way that can always be true.

In a game where most of the rules center around combat, and where just about every combat is decided by moving the enemy HP to 0, is it any wonder that people base their ability to meaningfully interact in game with their PC's ability to move the enemy HP to 0?

The Dresden Files RPG has this kind of concept in its City Creation rules. Locations and NPCs are created by the group in set ways. You might want to look into that. In fact, the first session of DFRPG is supposed to be dedicated to City Creation. Dungeon World has collaborative word...

This made me think of another aspect of fun vs. unfun: the concept of Misery Loves Company. Back to boardgames for a second, co-operative boardgames have been a big success lately. People enjoy winning and losing together. In co-op games, everyone wins or everyone loses together, and losing can...

Kind of. I think the length of streaks of nothing is the largest factor. So, if nothing interesting is happening for one combat, but each combat takes only 3-5 minutes, then it isn't that important that you had a boring combat. If combat, on the other hand, takes 10-20 minutes, then you've...

I like the concept of looking at what is not fun and going from there. For me, what is most not fun is a feeling of non-participation. I do a lot of boardgaming, more than roleplaying right now, so take a relatively common boardgame: Settlers of Catan. In that game, you've got settlements on a...