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Silent Hill Seriously, I've been looking for a good surreal, psychological horror rpg for some time now. It seems that most horror rpgs are either gothic horror (i.e. vampires, werewolves, etc.) or Lovecraftian horror (Cthulhu mythos and insanity).

It's somewhat of a balancing act. While I would rather not read overly flowery, "purple prose" (like Gygax occasionally fell into into in the original AD&D books), I do prefer more verbal descriptions than tables and boxes of numbers. One of my biggest complaints about 4e was how powers were...

PSIONICS !!! I know I'm going to get some flack from this, but I really want to see psionics included as an option (not requirement) in the core rules. I've always liked psionics because they represent how I envision magic much better than Vancian spell casting. In the 3e/3.5 psionics was...

I generally dislike players having multiple characters because it seems to dilute the role-playing aspect of the game. I've seen players have difficulty role-playing multiple characters, so they end up being extremely generic or pretty much the same character. However, it might depend on the...

I don't necessarily think that 'rules heavy = bad' or 'rules light = good'. I fact I like the degree of customization that certain rules heavy games, like HERO, allow. However, because I'm a full time graduate student and the people I game with have young children, our group is only able to...

The games feature combat, but the focus is not on action. In many ways they are the antithesis of the Resident Evil games. The characters are mainly 'common people' that don't have much in the way of combat training. Also, the scares come through the creepy atmosphere and sense of foreboding...

I've been thinking of running a horror game like the Silent Hill series of Playstation games, so I've been looking for an appropriate rule system that would support it. The things from the Silent Hill series of games that I would like to emulate are: A twisted "Dark World" version of the real...

Last month I started a thread about the ways that pronouns are handled in RPG manuals. As I mentioned, I am doing an investigation on pronoun usage in D&D for my graduate sociolinguistics class and am curious about what gamers on these forums think. When I created the original poll, I forgot...

As part of my graduate sociolinguistics class, I am examining the question of pronoun usage in D&D. Most older D&D players will remember back to 1st and 2nd edition when the masculine pronoun (he, him, his) was used generically. However, when 3e was released both masculine and feminine...

Does anyone know any good horror rpgs that can emulate the Silent Hill series of video games? I'm not looking for a Call of Cthulhu game where characters confront cosmic horrors and deal with things "man was not meant to know". Rather I'm looking at something that deals with personal...

I'm looking for gamers around the Bloomington Indiana area. I want to run a Castles & Crusades game, but I am also interested in playing 1/2e AD&D, 3.5e, and Pathfinder. (Since I don't have much time as a student, I may only be able to do a biweekly game rather than weekly.) If you are...

I always saw gnomes as having a unique niche - the forest/hill dwelling tricksters. Much like fey of folklore, gnomes prefer to play jokes and tricks on those who would invade their homeland. Maybe because I always pictured halflings like Tolkiens hobbits, I never saw halflings as the...

So far the playtest packet has included dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans. Although I know that we haven't seen anything close to the final version yet, I really hope that gnomes are included in PC races. Gnomes are an 'iconic' D&D race for me since they have been in the game since the...

I have heard this assertion before. I played 3e for several years (as well as its offspring, Pathfinder) and found nothing obviously imbalanced with it. I would like a fairly detailed rundown on some of the major balance problems. That said, there seem to be several very different...

I've heard a lot of talk on these boards about ways to "balance" 5e. Having thought about it, I'm beginning to wonder what is meant by the word "balance". Some people seem to think that balance means that every class should have exactly the same damage output in combat (e.g. If a wizard of a...

Ignoring the sarcasm, I will say that I do not mean to imply that 4e is just a tactical miniatures game. It clearly is not. Nor do I mean to revive the edition wars. I am not wanting to pit different editions against each other. However, I do feel that 4e got a little too focused on combat...

I suppose that I'm somewhat of a "grognard" at heart. With that said, I disagree with a lot of what the OP mentioned. One thing that I liked about the playtest rules was that they seemed fairly simple, without all the AEDU powers and tactics. I can see how some people, especially fans of 4e...

There are a number of reasons that I never liked encounter powers. First of all, they seemed way too "metagame" for my tastes. I never understood why they were limited to once an encounter. The argument that they represented an element of surprise that wouldn't fool the enemy again never made...

For the record, I am not saying that powers should never exist in D&D in any form. Or that any playstyle is "badwrongfun". I wouldn't mind that such rules existed as an optional expansion. I just don't want them part of the core. It just seems like a focus on dozens of different powers...

I much rather would have a simple fighter. This does NOT mean that I want a class that can just swing a sword. I wouldn't mind seeing bonuses to weapons and armor or different martial maneuvers. What I don't want to see is a huge selection of feats that I have to mull over when creating a...