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I do not believe that intentional design or careful thought is a new thing. Surely games like Runequest, Pendragon, Ghostbusters, Amber, Paranoia and Ars Magica are games designed with clear intent to support particular styles of play and were developed with careful thought by the designers...

Almost every time someone points out a specific, so-called "modern" innovation, it's something that has been around forever; the main point of differentiation from the old is that it's become more widespread and popular, instead of limited to some niche games. Metacurrencies, success with a...

I see no reason to believe crunch ever left. Mythras and BRP have thriving communities with new material being released and Mythras, at least, leans to the heavier side. Rolemaster is in the process of releasing a new edition. GURPS and HERO are still around. ACKS II and Ascendant have been...

Not in any meaningful sense. I would much prefer to play with a bad GM who is a friend and doing their best in good faith, than spend time trying to game with an LLM. I could have plenty of fun with the former. If you're talking about a bad GM I don't like, running a bad game I don't enjoy...

To provide a bit more detail, I made use primarily of GURPS 4e, Psionics, Tactical Shooting, High-Tech and Ultra Tech. I also took a little from Biotech. I developed my own research tree, where the players allocated points to available options. As per the traditional X-Com game, some projects...

What do you mean when you say it doesn't reward tactical play? Use the right set of optional rules, and you can expect the application of real world infantry minor tactics to result in consistent and believable outcomes. If we're focusing on the use of special abilities used in power-combos...

When I ran a combat-focused X-Com game, I used GURPS. Half the missions were investigation, VIP protection, recon and generally more conventional RPG-type scenarios. The other half of the sessions were pretty much just straight-up combat from session start to finish -- downed-UFO clearing...

If you can just use any stat you want for any task you want, you might as well just dump the lot and give everyone a single, fixed "competence" value.

I'm a big fan of plenty of empty space, especially between factions, to enable PCs and other forces to manoeuvre. Secret paths into, out of or past particular areas also provide strategic options.

The things that make a dungeoncrawl interesting tend to be the things that make D&D interesting in general. Factions, mysteries, exploration, a variety of challenges and obstacles, a sense of purpose. I would start by discarding kick-kill-loot as the basic gameplay loop and, as @Whizbang...

My impression taken from the 1e material is that Waterdeep, at least, is already cosmopolitan and that people there already associate with "monster" races (coming up from underneath, I assume, as a posse of orcs aren't likely to get the same benefit of the doubt while frolicking about in the...

A quick search finds me another thread by the prolific Yora (this time on rpg.net), where he points out the following substantial changes just between 1e's FR5 Savage Frontier and 2e's The North: Unless 3e rolled things back (which, as far as I'm aware, didn't happen), the differences are only...

Lots of FR posts on his blog here. Discussion of FR5 on EnWorld here.

I've only liked the idea of running games in the Forgotten Realms for less than a year (including a single, solitary session so far, with the second scheduled for this weekend), so I'd say it's a bit early for me to bored or over it. 😏 I am using the 1e boxed set and FR5 Savage Frontier as my...

There is certainly a bit of that. I'm not sure as to the truth of it, but I've heard it said the authors didn't want to include the traditional races at all. When management ruled that they must, the results we got were a form of malicious compliance. Whether that particular story is accurate...

It was a brief anecdote related to the topic, not a detailed analysis of the situation. It appears I may have made it seem more extreme situation when it was. While my basic reaction to his response was, "you reap what you sow", I did take his comments on board as a reminder not to go too...

Edit: Never mind, better off just moving on rather than responding.

My brother plays in an occasional OSR/Stonehell game I run for my niece and nephew (ages around 9 and 11). I don't tend to adjust the way I run the game for the kids (I'm a little more circumspect in some areas, but overall, not a huge difference). Last session, my niece used a sleep spell on...

The Veilled Alliance can be allies, enemies or both. Druids, merchants/merchant houses, outlying communities (human or otherwise), slavers. Kreen tribes. Internal noble and templar factions fighting over trade, logging rights or whatever. That's just off the top of my head and, if that's not...

I can see a little bit of Rolemaster influence in 3e, but absolutely nothing from Ars Magica. Casters were progressively having many of their limitations removed over the course of previous editions. 3e continued this process and combined this with revamping the save system so that spells...