Search results

The original boxed set is quite vague an open-ended, leaving lots of space for GMs to make the setting their own. Many of the basic details that are presented in the OBS are then contradicted by later material that locks things down. You can put this down to an unreliable narrator, but I think...

Abalach-Re is a dragon inasmuch as all the Sorcerer Kings are on the path to becoming dragons. They are dragons colloquially, but not true dragons. A brief googling tells me that Farcluun is also on the path, and not a full dragon.

As soon as you say there is only one of something, or it must be rare, everyone wants to make use of a special exception. This applies to writers as much as players. It's why every second Dark Sun adventure seems to have a portal to another world or visitors from elsewhere or whatever, despite...

I am very pleasantly surprised by all the answers on the first page showing people still have a willingness to make the game their own. Keep up the good work, people. (There may be similarly excellent answers throughout the thread, so I'm just as happy with anyone later on with a similar answer.)

Well, that's not mechanical weight, that's in-world consequences. But if you're playing Dark Sun and choose to ignore the moral, ecological and social consequences of what it means to defile, that's not the fault of the setting.

Yeah, I mean if you're going into the game with the attitude, "I am happy to contribute to the utter destruction of the environment, because the alternative is having a little less raw power," then the game is going to let you be that person, but such a concept isn't going to pass muster in a...

For me, it promotes heroic play because it's a setting where being pragmatic and selfish is incredibly easy and boring. The entire setting is a Call to Action. Here are evil, tyrannical sorcerer kings, with cadres of evil mages destroying the world. Here are thousands of slaves being worked to...

Dark Sun has always been this.

I have no idea what this means. [Edit: having separated it out from the rest and read it again after going through everything else in your post, it now makes sense, but I do feel it's written in an overly convoluted manner for something you intend as a brief summary.] If you do not believe...

@clearstream, you asked if it is "okay for posters to disfavour mechanics out of moral concerns" and did so in a fashion that suggests you believe that a moral concern is equivalent to a simple difference in taste where there is no moral component. I responded to say that forming an opinion on...

Morality isn't generally something we think of as a matter of personal preference. If you believe something is immoral, then you believe people doing that thing are behaving immorally and should change their behaviour -- you are casting judgement. If you present something as just a matter of...

If I was going to run online for some reason, all I would be after is a whiteboard and video + voice.

Yes, but I believe the point @rolemaster4evah is making that "overuse of d12s" and "being disrespectful to the tarot" are very specific concerns for an article that opens by telling us, "here are the common pitfalls".

As I recall, current vs maximum hit points is an ancient debate (which I'm not planning to weigh in on).

I have certainly never come across rules that ruin a game and which have been retained in that game while I continue to play. If a GM runs a game that isn't fun, I'd expect to have a conversation and make changes. It's not that hard to dial something back if it's not working. And if a GM is...

I think there are two different scenarios: If someone is seriously attempting to create a game they expect to distribute and have people outside their group play, then they are unlikely to release a satisfactory product without a reasonable amount of actual experience across the number of...

When we're talking about a leisure activity, if someone says that they prefer the 1e matrices to ascending AC as a subjective preference, I see no basis for demanding an explanation, or claiming that the preference is invalid without it. That would feel like expecting someone to provide an...

Yeah, I don't see much value in looking for things to call "objective" improvements. As you say, Adv/Dis is simplification at the cost of detail; how you feel about it depends on how much you value each of those things in the particular contexts where they apply. I would be tempted to say that...

I have already commented in this thread that the most modern version of Rolemaster is my least favourite. No one's claiming they won't be revised or changed. We're disputing the notion that change is always (or even often) an objective improvement. In my experience, beyond fixing typos and the...

Sure, no one said it can't be done. But @FrozenNorth did claim that any reasonable person would agree it's objectively unwieldy, and that is why I provided an alternative perspective.