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It was just wishful thinking on my part, but for a second I could have sworn that I saw... "Spider-Pig film in the works"

I was in college, and adopted the system immediately, though I needed a good six months before I grew comfortable with it.

This reminds me of a debate I once had several years ago with someone about the tactical options that PCs use when assaulting a dungeon complex (in the context of D&D). I'd posited that, for a stronghold where the native monsters were both intelligent and unified (in the sense that they were...

The entire presumption that "if you portray something evil in your work of creative fiction, and don't issue a disclaimer about how you don't agree with it, then you're endorsing it" is an incredibly toxic idea that has inexplicably become the default presumption for a particularly vocal...

Have you ever been burned out on a game that you've never even played before, because of that one person who just won't shut up about how it's the greatest and most incredible thing ever invented, and does everything so much better than those other games, and is all-too-happy to provide you with...

I just finished reading Fritz Leiber's Swords and Deviltry, and came away suitably impressed. Notwithstanding the exceptionally short stories that I read last year, this was my first read-through of The Twain's exploits (though they're never called that in this book), despite being familiar...

I thought the presumption was that all of the racial information in the 5E PHB was only supposed to describe PCs of each race—who are supposed to be exceptions unbound by the conventions/limitations ascribed to typical elves, dwarves, etc.—and not everyone else in the game world. Those are...

From now through Sunday, Lucky Dice Games is offering their system-agnostic supplement, Pru's Potions and Poisons Alchemy Shop Omnibus Edition, for 50% off! Click on the link to apply the discount. Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

It doesn't seem like much of an extrapolation at all when people unironically posit that a -2 penalty to one ability score is "shutting down some character concepts." EDIT: As far as I'm aware, the D&D Beyond data lists the most popular races, and the most popular classes, but not the most...

For me, that leans a little too close into the "tyranny of fun" problem, where "fun" is equated to "being able to have/do what(ever) I want (at any given time)," and so the idea becomes that any instance of being told "no" by the rules is therefore an instance of bad game design. Personally, I...

I still grimace when I remember the two players who, after being told that our next campaign was going to be Ravenloft-style gothic horror in tenor, decided to make characters who were tag-team luchador wrestlers. One spoke in faux-Spanish, and the other talked in a Hulk Hogan accent. The GM...

No, it's not. There are absolutely some ideas that can't be executed under a given framework of rules, and other ideas that can be executed under such a framework but not very well. A -2 penalty to a single ability score does not fall under either of those headings. The idea that they do is an...

When someone states their opinion of what's "bad" as if it were objectively true, and goes on to state that that their beliefs have been undeniably proven and that there's no debate to be had, it's important to remember that they're either trolling or a fanatic, and that there's nothing to be...

I'm not sure how you'd have a framework of rules that don't impose limits, if for no other reason than doing something in a given way rules out doing it some other way. Even if you have optional rules or other alternatives, using them results in not using whatever rule they replace. Any given...

There's a great discussion to be had regarding the aspects of the social contract that come into play when players build disadvantages into their characters, specifically with regard to their expectations (particularly in comparison to the GM's expectations) as to how frequently those...

Even if they allow for freeform character creation, there's still going to be things you can't do. A given option in a point-buy system, for instance, might cost more points than you have available at 1st level (or even for several levels after that). "I should be able to immediately play the...

This is a salient question, because the entire point of having rules is to impose limits. This necessarily means that some ideas won't work as well as others, and other ideas won't be workable at all, under any particular game engine. Yes, that means that a halfling will never be able to...

I recall this happening before, probably due to some tweaking of Xenforo; you should be able to change it back to twenty posts per page in your profile settings.

Except that in a fantasy world, it doesn't have to be a cultural thing. You can have all dwarves inherently knowing the dwarven language, regardless of whether or not they grew up around other dwarves, because the dwarven gods imbue them with that language prior to their birth. Or because...

I think it's important to remember that this is a question of how you approach the game, in terms of generating characters. While a lot of people seem to think that the default method is to have your character completely developed—in terms of identity, powers/abilities, and backstory—before you...