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This is true, and most present in the Wises. In the demo game I ran one of the players said he wanted to look for a shady character that might know about the plot going on. In MG, there *is* a shady character if a player wants to use his Wises. Now the roll determines not if such a character...

I love Mouse Guard, but sadly most of my group does not. It was the combat system that did it for them. The party is split into teams, either two teams of two, one team of three, or what have you. The players decide which of them will do what actions, in secret, for three phases while the GM...

Here's my tip I always give to new GenCon attendees - do NOT attempt to stay outside the convention center! All the hotels that book through the GenCon web site are within walking distance, if not physically attached. The pain and trouble to try to park every day is not worth it. I'd rather...

Yes, I would say so. I'd picture it as a user enters their location. If there's a group for that location, the server informs the user. If there's not, it will look for the closest one or ask the user to create one. One reason I think Meetup worked for us was the emphasis on real life...

Cross-posting from that board with all the hooligans. If you really want to steal functionality, look at Meetup.com. They've done wonders for our town since I started a group. It gives us a place to talk, to schedule local games, and to arrange meetups in a public place before you start...

Call of Cthulhu can play out like this. I think it is the polar opposite of D&D. Rather than start out pathetic, then grow to compentent, then powerful, then godlike, the PCs start out basically competent and don't really advance much. Skills go up some, but generally you start out skilled at...

There was once a great essay by Ron Edwards of all people on the history of early D&D. The articles at the Forge seem to be down now though, sadly. From what he reported, the early RPG rules - not just D&D but stuff like Ardiun Grimoire, Chainmail, and other rules, were not used or thought of...

Definitely. It also has a confessional mechanic, where one character can talk about what's going on with the other PCs, and even refer to future events. So if someone says 'It was pretty scary in that house, but things REALLY got crazy after Joe went off by himself and opened the closet'. If...

The central concept of InSpectres is that the GM doesn't decide *anything* ahead of time. He doesn't know what the NPC knows either. If the player were to lose the roll, then the GM would get to narrate the scene, and could say what he wants or have some other event entirely happen. This...

Dogs in the Vineyard is interesting because social conflcits and combat conflicts are treated as being different points on the same continuum. It starts with arguing, if you lose the argument you can either accept the loss or raise the stakes to get physical. If you fail while pushing and...

I have it but have not had time to delve into it. I'll come back once I do.

I think he meant Pathfinder + Dark heresy + WHFRP > D&D, not that any of them individually sold more. That's something I could believe.

I've got two Christmas themed games coming up. The first is my Hunter: the Vigil. The cell will see a story of a young girl that was beaten in her bedroom and her sister kidnapped. The child claims a monster climbed into her window, beat her with sticks, and put her sister in a basket and...

One of my favorite approaches is to not proscribe behavior, but to apply modifiers. If you succeed in a social attack, you give them penalties if they don't do what you want, or bonuses if they do. This keeps it from being a straightjacket, allows NPC to PC social skill use or PC to PC, and...

The main problem with the Skill Challenge system is that there's only one thing to do - try to get successes. Combat is more interesting because there's more to do. Not just powers, but you can gain advantageous position, use powers that inflict conditions onto your foes, bring in new allies...

Agreed. Having a lot of combat doesn't make it a wargame, so long as the events in the game are imagined as a narrative and there is an arbiter beyond the rulebook. It just makes it a violent RPG. I disagree that an RPG *must* have lots of combat rules. This is plain from the large number...

Heavily inspired by TV shows. My Hunter: The Vigil game is a ripoff of Supernatural. When I get to play I often do the same thing. I would love to play a character based on Gaius Baltar from BSG or Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars. :)

Most of the games I play feature more research, investigation, and interaction than combat, and therefore the rules involved are pretty important. So why have rules? Why not just rely on GM fiat? Well, why not do that for combat? The players states his intention to kill the enemy, describes...

Same in Springfield. I know of or am personally involved in the following Exalted Hunter: The Vigil Savage Worlds 2e D&D 4e D&D Another 4e D&D Our meetup group runs all kinds of games, and there are plenty of other gamers about. There's a healthy Warhammer/WHFRP group that seems to be...

This is a key component. In the game in question, the witch would certainly not expect to be casting spells in every situation. Indeed doing so, from canon, is a path to darkness and evil, where the caster sees his will as being synonymous with Right. PC witches can fight about as well as any...