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For me, it comes down to a few specific areas: ease, emphasis, and personal nostalgia. BECMI is easy to run. The game's built-in tools make world-building (both dungeon and wilderness design) super easy. Once you have a handle on the core mechanics (searches, turns, wandering monster checks...

The only tenable definition of "roleplaying" is "everything you do while playing a roleplaying game." RPG systems do gameplay, not genre. Seeking out a "space opera RPG" without specifying what kind of gameplay you envision is about as useful as seeking out a "space opera video game" without...

Perhaps it was Gygax's impenetrable, roundabout way of saying, "You're supposed to identify your magic items by paying sages heaps of coin after the adventure, but if you want to take a gamble on a dodgy 1st-level magic-user spell instead…"

…My point exactly. Elves in steam-powered jetpacks? Boo, that's not punk! Elves in magical plate-mail, throwing fireballs and swinging enchanted swords? Yep, totally medieval and definitely dealing with weighty matters of historical feudalism and theocracy — also very Tolkienesque, definitely...

I trust, for consistency's sake, that you bear the same hatred for """Tolkieneqsue""" fantasy, """medieval""" fantasy, and other popular but ultimately shallow genres/aesthetics? If not, singling out steampunk would be, at the very least, kind of weird.

My white whale — I'm still working on how I'd actually map this out — is a game that starts as a D&D campaign, but on every level of a huge megadungeon is a portal to a different universe. You can only open each portal by finding the right key elsewhere in the dungeon, but once you do, you have...

Gotta go with Farscape.

I'll go one step further (and leave how tongue-in-cheek I'm being up to the imagination): TSR published D&D. WotC merely publishes D&D™.

2e psionics? I loved 'em. I only have experience playing with the original (CΨHB) system and never saw the revised Dark Sun/Skills & Powers version in action, but one player in particular in my old high school group consistently played psionicists in our 2e games, and we never ran into any...

Alchemist, samurai, sage.

You started 5 years before I did, so I'll just be hitting my quarter-centennial come this fall (though it's been long enough now that I can't remember whether I started playing in August or September; all I know is that it was very early in the school year, the second week or so of my freshman...

My sentiment as well. AD&D is Gary's D&D, which is cool and all, I respect it, I have all the AD&D books on my shelf and regard them as "case law" or "precedent" with respect to my own D&D campaigns — but I'm interested in playing my take on the game that Gary & Dave made, not Gary's take on the...

It's worth pointing out, I think, that "roll under the stat" is not a commonly used mechanic in any 70s or early 80s expression of the OD&D or AD&D rules as published by TSR. We see it used once or twice in early modules like B1 (where it's expressed as d%, 5% per point of ability score to...

The idea that spellcasting clerics aren't run-on-of-the-mill clergy or run-of-the-mill church militant, they're rare and exceptional individuals like prophets and miracle-workers, has been around for a long time; but I don't think it was ever codified into any flavor text in a D&D rulebook until...

Well I certainly like the silicone mat that comes in the Best Chess Set Ever better than the traditional tournament vinyl mats. So, yeah, this is really tempting; especially if it works with dry-erase markers. Pity it looks like they're only doing 1" grids. I'm a 20mm minis guy.

33rd level with Int 18 for mage, 36th level with Wis 18 for cleric. Mages, of course, have to find the spell and learn it, while clerics can just pray for it; what's more, a cleric will reach 36th level a cool million XP before a mage hits 33rd (2.9 vs 3.9 million XP).

This is where I'm at. I tend to be the only one in my circle who cares about these games enough to DM, tinker, design, playtest, read forums, etc. But because I care, I'm also particular about what I'm willing to run — and if there's something about a system that I don't like, I won't hesitate...

"Magic-user minus spellbook" has never exactly been a compelling archetype. The only time it's ever felt justified has been when it was called "psionicist."

71 Making 4e all rigid and perfectly balanced RUINED D&D FOREVER 72 Making 5e all loosey-goosey and unbalanced RUINED D&D FOREVER

OD&D vol 1 Men & Magic says: "Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role." So I have myself roll for my players' stats, old-old-school style. I do...