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The problem is that you aren't giving any context. If this is at your house, then you saying "Hey, I don't like alcohol please don't bring any beer over." is you expressing your preferences. If the group is deciding where to play and you express a preference to the game store (where there's no...

That's not the point. Everyone else will become brighter, more interesting, and more witty after *you* have a couple of drinks. :P

What difference does that make? Do you have a medical condition that keeps you from being around smokers, since you've admitted that its not possible to be allergic to it?

Agreed. Any kind of contract/agreement would be met with disbelief and laughter. How about we hang out awhile, and you just use your judgement about if you think we can game together. Works pretty well for me. To me its inappropriate for a guest to try and control what goes on in their...

I tend to play fast and loose with the rules, but then my rule of thumb is whenever you do that, do it in the player's favor. If you ignore some fiddly bits to let someone do something cool, that makes the game More Fun. If you ignore the rules because you want to keep the players from doing...

One alternative is a rule of thumb I call the 'John Woo' rule. Every action has some effect. Missing your attack roll means that you don't damage your opponent. But there can certainly be other effects. The most common being damage to the environment. Rather than a miss, maybe a candlabra...

I'm about one more phone call or text away from banning cell phones as well.

Well, I'm a smoker but we even go outside at my house. Having some beers is fine, as long as people aren't getting drunk. Wanting to ban relationships is weird to me, as I've always gamed with couples and never had any problems. So what's my no-goes? - Social retardation. I know, our hobby...

Here's where the disconnect is. Not everyone plays RPGs like they're members of an elite special forces team. I've really never played that way, unless it was a straight up military RPG. Even with D&D, there was the assumption that we were a bunch of friends having adventures, not members of...

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Yes, please provide links to character generators that include every option in the company's game line. No other company in the industry does this. The Adobe problem I'd blame on Adobe personally. Probably their firefox plugin mucking things up. Are you trying to open them in the browser...

WHy would someone adventure with a loser? That is a good question, and must be answered before gameplay starts. The most obvious being that the loser character is friends or family. You aren't going to kick your brother out of the group no matter how much of a screw-up he is. Might even work...

I did a lot of props in my CoC game. Newspaper articles and snippets from books and journals were the norm. Correspondence, telegrams, hand-addressed envelopes also saw an appearance. Probably the best was the little 3x5 faux-leather bound journal I got and filled with notes from the evil...

This would be true except for my favorite example of character sheet design aiding play. With the success chart right on the front page of the character sheet, it has never been a problem for my group. In fact one of the first things I did when I ran AFMBE was to photoshop the success chart...

Depends what you are trying to be immersed in. The Buffy RPG does not make any allusion to simulating being a real teenager in a world full of monsters. It emulates the PC being a Cast Member on a teen drama full of vampires and demons. The Hard Bright Line helps this - these guys roll dice...

A lot of it has to do with how things are described. IME it generally goes something like this. GM: The orc lashes out with his axe, you see the blade coming toward your face! Gonna do anything about that? PLayer: I bring my sword up to block the attack! *Rolls, adds numbers* 16! GM...

Again, as someone that runs just such a game, not at all. The randomization is still there, the players roll it instead of me, that's all. There's still an element of tactics involved. For example, I can have a vampire punch someone, and that just uses his Combat score. I can have him start...

I run a lot of Cinematic Unisystem, which uses exactly this mechanic. Rolling dice is for players. It works pretty simply. The bad guys have a 'Combat' score. This is an average roll plus what they would add to make attacks or to dodge. If the PC wants to hit the bad guy, they roll their...

One of my favorite mechanics comes from Cinematic Unisystem. To return from the dead, the player must spend Drama Points (sub action dice or hero points or similar mechanic). The number spent depends on when they come back, not how. IIRC, if they don't return until next season (after the...

It does vary from game to game, depending on that game's focus. But I'll try to be general. My main theory is that which drives the game forward is conflict. This is why combat is so common in RPGs. Its a clear conflcit - the bad guys want the PCs to die. The PCs want to not die. There are...