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Now that's the kind of system I'm talking about. When I read these ultra-light systems, I begin to wonder whether or not a black box approach is worth it as a player who buys into something like A&A or Risus is probably a greater asset if they know the system. Another reason why this has...

Excellent point. There's also nothing wrong with taking preorders and doing a print run for the initial demand. Very, very good point. It was one of the original goals of the OGL. To ensure a baseline satisfactory version of D&D is preserved regardless of future versions of D&D. And it...

The problem is that now those customers are well supported by other game makers. Paizo produces tons of content for those who like 3.x. And there's lots of others doing 3.x/PF support as well. There's also no shortage of new stuff compatible with OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry...

Is splitting the customer base as dangerous now given how the cost of small print runs has dropped dramatically? Thus solving the margin issue Lisa Stevens mentioned? It simply isn't 1995 anymore.

Definitely. I was thinking it'd probably be better for online voip type play. This does seem to be the major concern expressed so far. I'm not sure yet whether or not I agree with the the immersion thing having never tried it before. I'd probably change "don't really" to "might not." The...

:D Next time, I'll try to keep my rampant sizism in check. I'm looking into some lighter rules sets. I'd want to be consistent with the rules rather than simply free form everything. That would be an additional fun puzzle to tack onto play for those who really know systems well. As far...

I think you can take a look at the playtest document and see some of the rationale behind particular rules. Especially by contrasting them with other mechanics. Take, for example, the departure from having an encounter as a unit of game time connected to power refresh. Or the removal of...

That's really neat. Seems to have produced good play. I think I may have gone from idle curiosity to starting to hunt down a suitable system and talking to some friends about trying it out.

The application for playing with younger players should have been obvious to me. Thanks for bringing that up. :) And the distinction between narrative and descriptive exchanges is also interesting. There is no reason this type of approach wouldn't work with "who gets their way in the...

This conversation brought up a memory of a gaming buddy describing a campaign in which the entirety of the system was not accessible to the players. I created a separate thread (and a poll) about black box GMing...

A while back, a miniature gaming buddy described an RPG campaign he played in where 100% of the system resolution was handled by the GM with no player-GM interaction in rules terms. Everything was in fictional descriptive terms with the GM spitting out results using whatever system he happened...

I've played 5E in both TotM mode and with a grid. No real preference. TotM is faster, but with a grid, we have no "But I wasn't there, I was over there!" moments. Both are fine.

Both are very, very DM centric. I don't think either one creates any expectation on the players' side of things as far as what the rules are for finding secret doors. The 2nd option is straight up OD&D. Which was part of the point of the design of the game. Gygax talked a lot in Dragon...

Isn't the only difference between suggested rulings for everything and rules for everything is a Rule 0 paragraph that says the DM can do whatever the DM wants? Everyone at the table following the rules of the game isn't a new concept. It's been around for as long as chess or mancala...

I see so much potential in a game like the one Mearls talked about when 5E was announced. I'd like to see some of that potential realized. As for my status, I think it's accurate. I think the industry and hobby is probably healthier with 3 or 4 main games rather than one with 90%+ of the...

I guess I'm still waiting for the stuff they talked about in their preview articles. Which is modularity that would allow multiple groups to get something different out of the game. Given the goal of uniting the editions, the fact that they didn't lead with that makes me wonder if they've...

The reason rulings not rules approach works with 0D&D is that there simply are not rules for the situations that might come up in play, so the job of assessing them and deciding the outcome is put into one person's hands. Games with complete rules covering what the game is about generally don't...

My only memory of C&S was of constantly looking things up in the rulebook. I remember it being very, very rules dense with different rules for all sorts of situations and not much in the way of using one mechanic to resolve multiple situations. Can't comment about metaresources or any...

Yeah. As soon as you have a resource like that, even if it's supposed to represent a character's stamina in the fiction, a player can spend them in a flurry or hold off to manage spot light time (or a variety of other purposes). When you're not playing a simulation/description-circuit based...

They were publishing it. Now they publish a version of the rules called Legend which is runequest with the runequest filed off. It's actually a nice little set of rules. RuneQuest 6 is coming out later this year, hopefully in the next couple months or so. It's the same designers that did...