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Ranger. Then they'd finally have an identity that couldn't already be handled by "warrior class + outdoorsy background." (And there's a bit of precedent from the BECMI elf-trained "forester" class, which is a pure gish.) (Hard no on any name that uses "sword" or "blade", though. We don't want...

Goombas. Goombas are stompable little maniacs, and they're worth 100 points each. (Then 200, 400, 500, 800... stomp enough of the blighters in a row and you start earning 1UPs!)

That stuff is fun. But it's also the case that the last few decades of modern fantasy have humanized orcs, goblins, kobolds, ogres, and other traditional D&D humanoids to an extraordinary degree. And frankly, I'm okay with that. Elder Scrolls orcs and Warcraft goblins are cool. Shrek is a decent...

Druids are priests, the same as clerics. They 100% serve deities, particularly deities of human cultures. But where clerics serve big, ineffable, cosmic gods of Order or Chaos, druids serve the deities of the Balance between the two forces, deities which tend to be close to the land, in harmony...

Oh, absolutely. I love the Mentzer Set, the '91 ("New Easy-to-Master') black box and '94/'96 Classic set. Grew up on 'em, learned to play from 'em, still use 'em.

The '81 or '83 Basic Set? If it's Tom Moldvay's booklet, the armor table is with the rest of the equipment on page B12. If it's Frank Mentzer's, which is admittedly a much more confusing layout for reference purposes, armor prices are on page 22 and Armor Classes are on page 50 (but with each...

Maybe.

I think my point wasn't clear enough. The long term effect of just about any benefit you can think of is increased DPR for the better weapons. Even if all weapons are made to ostensibly inflict 1d6 damage on a hit, anything you do to increase your chance of hitting with a bigger, better weapon...

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Oh, absolutely. Ben Milton is vocally in the camp that says "OSR" is principles, not mechanics, and he most definitely backs up his position with a robust œuvre of publications.

😯 In B/X!? A.k.a., "the one with all the really detailed dungeon-crawling and hex-crawling rules"!?!

I've given this one a lot of thought before responding. I think I'm going to have to go with feats. They're fiddly, they're inherently restrictive (in that they define what you can't do as much as what you can do), and they're just plain indicative of a level of mechanical character...

As soon as you decide to give two-handed weapons more damage output than one-handed weapons, you have a variable weapon damage system. And if you don't do that, why in the world would anyone ever favor a two-handed weapon over a one-handed weapon and a shield or second weapon?

Risus is exactly as @Tonguez described. Flexible enough that it can easily handle a mass combat just like a small-scale combat, but it'll very light on detail. The Book of War (and the Fellowship Supplement) aim to give old-school D&D a suitable mass-battle system that replaces the likes of...

I certainly hope so, but sadly very few artistic tarot decks have suit and number indices. If this deck does in fact prove to be suitable for jeu de tarot? Hey presto, WotC'll actually get some of my money for once.

I once ran a whole BECMI campaign that took two players from 1st level up to the end of the "Initiate" tier (immortal level 6th in Wrath of the Immortals, roughly equivalent to a Temporal Novice in the much more baroque gold box rules) over the course of about three real years. When the...

They're mostly pretty good changes IMO. Expanded weapon and armor lists, a clerical spell progression that looks more like AD&D, and (most especially) MUs getting to add spells to their books as they find them? Threaten me with a good time…

(This is some epic thread necromancy.) I used to be on team d16, but at the moment I'm a d14 proponent — you can always generate a random number from 1 to 16 by rolling a d8 and d2, but the d14 is genuinely handy for adding multiples of 7 (or days of the week) to your dice pool. And I have a...

Nobody deliberately named the movement "OSR." It was a mere accident of recent hobby history, and it's as unfortunate and potentially misleading/divisive a name as "roleplaying game" itself. (e.g. I would personally much rather "fantasy wargaming" had stuck, or "tabletop adventure gaming" had...

When I do still have occasion to play AD&D, I run stats almost by-the-book (and I make characters roll 3d6 in order, the default method in 2nd edition, so significant modifiers are rare); the only significant change that I make is eliminating percentile Strength, and instead just giving...