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Coming here to post about Buffy. The plot device-ness of a spell is in the hands of the Director. The way it works is a player wants to find a spell to do something, describes its effect to the GM. The player then does research, trying to find a spell that does what he wants. The GM has...

Hey, don't discount sharing food. Its at least as important to gamer culture as polyhedral dice and escapist fantasy. :) Shellbelle gets the A in that one, not me, insisting on cooking dinner for each game and pestering the ones that don't eat like an overprotective mother. Two of our...

When we play Pandemic, we usually define the diseases as follows Yellow - Ebola or Cholera Black - Bubonic Plague Red - Avian Flu Blue - Erectile Dysfunction Gotta poke fun at First World Problems. :D

A - Pacing I really focus on how well the pacing in a game goes, because I consider it the most important. I'm willing to throw out anything else for the sake of pacing. Realism, game balance, my plots and plans, all have been sacrificed on the altar of pacing. I think it makes the games...

Actually, Dungeons & Dragons wasn't the first roleplaying game, just the first commercially available one. The first was Braunstein. A military style game where players took the roles of individual agents, trying to achieve different goals in a town. Arenson was the first player, under the...

Everyone, including nongamers, that I've played Pandemic with has loved it. I don't see it as being significantly more complicated than Monopoly. Or heck, even chess.

I GM for my own amusement. I tend to run PC-driven games. I don't do plots, or more world-building than needed. I set up situations with no simple out and see what the players do with it. That's the fun for me, seeing what kind of monkey wrenches they throw at me. I just put things in front...

I would make the difference that even in lawless areas, certain restrictions in bar brawling are recognzied. If you want to pull out your sword and spells while everyone else is using fists and mugs, go for it. But that means they're going to pull out their swords, or call out the guards/local...

Here's what I would do. Treat the brawl as a skill challenge. They can roll intimidate to keep people off of them, make basic attacks to knock people out, athletics to swing from chandaliers, stealth to hide under tables, etc.

The trick to a minigame, imo, is making it an interesting game without an obvious best strategy. The best I've come up with was the research minigame for BtVS (link). While doing research is just a stat + Skill roll to get success levels, I expanded it into a larger system. (In CineUnisystem...

Pretty much anything. I don't play D&D much, and the games I do play we don't tend to be very suppliment heavy. We have 5-6 books we use in my Hunter game, and its already annoying me with rules spread too far out. But they're so awesome! :)

Well, to counter your anecdote with my own, most of the people I game with, if not all, would call themselves 'role players'. The general consensus is that there's nothing wrong with a good tactical game, but there's not much desire to mix it into roleplaying. Most of us also play board games...

I don't really game with people with poor social skills, so that's never been an issue. I do tend to run investigation heavy games, so social skills are often more important than combat skills. My hunter game last night for instance, had about 3 1/2 hours of talking to people and looking for...

Tastes change over time for multiple reasons. For me, the game and genre its in limit the stories that can be told and the kinds of games one can play. When 3e first came out, I was a bit of a grognard about it. I had mountains of 2e books and considered myself content with that. After...

I'll take a group I like with a system I don't over the opposite. However, a good group with a bad system would be better with good system. System matters, it affects play in so many ways. Having a good group with fun dynamics can be stifled if the rules get in their way all the time. System...

I had an AD&D character lose his boots in a dungeon one time. Poor guy had to roll Con checks to be able to run over rough ground, take extra damage from some traps, and other effects. Maybe a cloak doesn't have a game effect because you assume all D&D characters have cloaks. Without one...

Mouse Guard. The cloaks are essentially signs of office, and while there's no mechanical effect, the color of the cloak usually reflects the personality of the mouse.

Yes they are, by my meaning. They buy books, they buy miniatures, they post on forums. A majority of my players do these things seldom, if at all. My main game no one has any books for it except me. The best approach I've found is spisodic play and a quorum. Each game ends with the PCs...

Well there was also Underworld, which was based on Vampire: The Masquerade, but they had to sue to get credit and compensation. :) This is a part of it. I've been to GenCon and know that 99+% of the people in this hobby are perfectly normal folks. Its that fraction of a percent, the ones...

This isn't a lie. To felines, dice and indistiguisable from cat toys. I'd lost the d8 from my special limited edition glow in the dark Call of Cthulhu dice that I paid $36 for. Months later, I found it under the TV stand. I'm certain the cat is to blame. My favorite story about gamers and...