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I'm still awaiting sufficient clarification of the study Ryan was involved in/privy to, to conclude that it is (1) at all valid and (2) applicable to current games. To reiterate: comparing Storyteller and AD&D2 is a lot like comparing a braeburn apple and a fuji apple--if you don't find much...

I've always thought that a fairly questionable solution. Problem: rules are too complex to learn during one campaign. Solution 1: play multiple campaigns New Problem: people get tired of a given genre/setting before they can play sufficient multiple campaigns. Solution 2: get everybody to use...

Hmmm...I'm not sure whether i'm arguing for a theoretical situation, or only for my own experiences. IME, while failing to consistently use all of the rules, it is nonetheless slower than a rules-light game. Yes, if i actually stripped it down to a rules-lite game, it probably would be neither...

Which gets at the crux of the argument: several of us are claiming that the only way a truly rules-lite game could possibly not be faster than something fairly crunchy is if those playing the rules-lite game were trying to get the same level of detail out of it as out of the crunchy game--i.e...

I think so, and here it is: "A reasonable, but imperfect, GM is no less likely to make consistency-wrecking mistakes in a crunchy system than a rules-lite system, and may, in fact, be more likely, due to the greater volume of rules to keep track of." And it's not just the hypothetical converse...

And what's wrong with that? They make their argument--politely and succinctly--and you consider the new facts (if they actually are new to you), and either change your ruling, or don't. An dthen you get on with the game. We do that all the time. Sometimes it's a rules matter ("The wemic hits you...

I have no idea why anyone would think it was 80s-ish. As for possible antecedents, Ars Magica, V:tM, Pendragon, and Fading Suns all predate The Burning Wheel by a considerable margin. I'm fairly certain that there are considerably-older games that do it too, but i couldn't think of any. And i...

You gonna be at GenCon? Come play one of our [The Impossible Dream's] games, and i guarantee you'll see how it's done. You may still not like it, but at least you'll understand it. Four Colors al Fresco will show you heavily-shared authorial power, subjective character traits, and interpretive...

Which makes me suspect all the more strongly that the reason for no backlist sales isn't the consumers, but some combination of the retailers and teh distributors.

Cool! That pretty much kills all my objections to the ENnies (and they weren't really "objections"--i didn't care, they just made the awards irrelevant to me). But you might want to change the category descriptive text on the ENnies page, since it says something to the effect of "if it's got a...

I don't think you're killing the hobby if you don't support the LGS. And i don't advocate supporting a crappy LGS. I'm saying that if you get any value out of the FLGS, you should support it proportionately. and I claim that most people are getting more value out of it than they are factoring...

I think your lack of experience with rules-lite RPGs is showing. Because there are plenty of RPGs out there that are both rules-lite, and give the GM *less* power than in a game like, say Fading Suns. They do this by giving the rest of the players *more* power than most other RPGs--in fact, i'll...

And, as i said in one of the other threads, i don't think any truly rules-lite games besides Over the Edge and Amber DRP even existed when this study was likely conducted--a few old ones were long out of print and mostly long-forgotten, and most rules-lite RPGs hadn't been invented yet. If...

v. 2 I'm plenty educated--i've spent extensive time learning from all those places you site, and then some. So somebody please educate me. As i understand it, the standard three-tier distribution model is 60% discount to the distributor, 40% discount to the retailer. Further, i know for a fact...

Now, personally, i think that RPGs won't die, at least not while this generation of gamers is alive. But that's not the same as saying that there will "always be a business to serve their gaming needs". That's just foolish talk--as in any luxury good. If the minimum production cost to produce...

Actually, the small publishers already can't afford the distributor/retailer model, and are either selling directly to retailers, or just plain selling direct. POD is making this increasingly possible. Kill the FLGS and the distributor, and the small publishers are untouched. The biggest ones...

Is the customer right even when she makes a decision against her own [self-declared] best interests, due to ignorance or misunderstanding? [There is precedent for that: shopping at the place that undercuts the prices of a business that gives you better service in some other way, and that other...

Let me provide a counter-example: i guarantee you that i am noticably less consistent when running Arcana Unearthed than i am running Over the Edge -- or even Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Heck, i was more consistent when running AD&D2 (no Players' Option). In all cases, precisely because there are...

There is a conceptually-simple solution to this dilemma, and one that has been successfully implemented in a fair number of RPGs: PCs and NPCs don't use the same rules. That's all it takes to reduce the GM's burden. As for actually implementing it, the tricky part is making the NPC rules a...

It's an Anglicized Romanized Greek word. In both Greek and Roman, it would be "die-moan", roughly. According to English 'rules', it could be "dee-mun" or "day-mun" (there're examples of both) if it's an 'a' and an 'e'. When written as an a-e ligature, it should be "dee-mun"--best canonical...