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Okay, that's a matter of judgement, and I don't want to talk you out of yours (especially since I'm very much on the fence about how I feel about Fox/Grim&Perilous Studios in general). Just wanted to make clear that I think that it's possible for games to be inspired by/based on other games...

Sorry to belabor the point, but this doesn't make sense. There's a lot of middle-ground between being a knock-off (which means a low-quality imitation) and being totally unrelated. Star Wars is not of knock-off of Dune, but it sure as hell has been heavily influenced by it. Or, in RPGs - leaving...

Honestly, I don't see the knock-off problem. There's many things that Fox can be faulted for, but there's obviously years of design work put into ZH, it's all original writing, full of new concepts, and it has become it's own animal. There's nothing lazy about it. There's a lot of RPGs that...

Wasn't there a Gangs of Kahabro playtest based on the Year Zero Engine recently? Are they doing both, or is it back to Zweihänder? I'm really so on the fence every time I read about this. I kind of liked the first edition, but it also made some serious missteps (the atrocious gnomes, for...

Thanks for pointing this out! I suspect the situation is not much different in my native Germany. It's always good to remember that critique is fine, but that no one is entitled to get exactly the product they want. I'd rather have lots of creators who follow their vision, resting assured that...

To add something positive: I actually like the layout and it's romantic-fantastic vibe. The whole vibe of the game, actually. It's still going to end up on my shelf, but I think I'll wait until I can get both volumes in print.

I get it ... I can see the Aliens influence in WH40k, but it's much like the Tolkien influence in D&D - WH40k is still a totally different animal from Alien, and D&D in its usual form has very little similarity to Middle-Earth. (Also, always a pleasure to encounter one of the few people besides...

I'd say this depends a lot on the rules and the setting. There are rules that would make little sense without the setting attached. I don't want a "rules book" and a "setting book" for The One Ring, for example, because the rules are tied to Middle-Earth, anyway. Also, there are a lot of...

I'm on the fence on this ... I buy most RPGs for reading, but I, too, prefer clarity and brevity. But honestly, on the other hand, I don't want my RPG books to read like "manuals". Only a fraction of the RPGs I read end up at the gaming table, anyway. There's a lot of RPGs that achieve a good...

That I can understand ... I even hate that if it only happens within the space of one scenario (when the authors tries to save the big reveal to last not only for the players, but also for the GM reading it beforehand).

Wow, had I known this from the beginning, it would probably have sold me on the setting.

Really sounds a lot like BRP to me, where progression usually is pretty much all diegetic (go into a temple and pay to learn a spell, raise skills if you use them or pay a teacher ...).

I'm not quite sure what it means, but it sounds good ... however, if you want customizable character generation, it might not be a good idea to start with any kind of D&D, since relatively rigid classes - to me - look like the most persistent core element of it. I don't now, without having...

I am! In Melsonian Arts Council I trust. I'm not even sure that the whole "playing bastards" concept appeals to me, but the magic system looks great (basically you're playing blackjack, but there's a really neat way in which it uses magical ingredients that sounds extremely un-fiddly; you can...

Yes, I think that advice is right there in the Cypher System book -it's just that it's terribly intransparent which types and focusses feature which abilities. They tried to solve that problem by creating one long alphabetic ability list in the 2nd edition, but that didn't really make it easier...

To be fair, I was mainly annoyed because I approached Numenera with the notion that "exploration" means "finding out", and not just "finding" (and then making creative use of). That was at a time when I wasn't aware of "exploration" as a term for one of the three "pillars" of classic...

I kind of like the idea on a "gamist" level, and they did what they were supposed to do in play - quite regulary, the players came up with some smart and/or entertaining way to use them. But they also felt very rules-first, in the sense of: "We don't care where it came from or why it does what...

Especially the D&Dish-gain-some-random-power type of weirdness. Still, I admit that there is a lot to love about the system; the monster design (a level and a couple of special abilities) is great, and it does get a lot of mileage out of its core resolution system. It's just that at the table...

I ran a year-long campaign with it and actually had tons of fun, but I'd never run it again - for one thing, my players really learned to hate all the fiddling with the pools und difficulties. Also, when I bought the Cypher System core book, I realized how anti-modular the whole...

Are we counting "Against the Darkmaster" as part of the family? Because it looks like a pretty succesful re-imagining of MERP, with some Rolemaster bits and some modern make-it-up-as-you-go mechanics (I love the healing herbs mechanic, which is basically: Defince what your herb is supposed to...