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In the introduction to a story in Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Howard.. oh, crap, I'm blanking... Waldrop. There. One belief he mentions is the idea that new boots will prevent one from getting the plague. And of course, we all remember the US president's son who died of a blister from...

The operating distinction I've used I probably cribbed from Hero Games' Fantasy Hero many years ago. High Fantasy (or Epic Fantasy) often makes a conscious choice to deal with Good Vs. Evil. Magic is powerful and can be used by either side. Protagonists may or may not wield magic. The scale...

A friend and I once bashed out a magic system for superheroes which was based on the idea that all superheroes are magic, whether they know it or not, and that they each have a totem spirit. Sometimes it's obvious -- Batman = bats, Spider-man = spiders -- sometimes it's not; the totem spirit can...

I pinned all my hopes on the wording, as follows: In which case, the survivor is # 1, by definition. However, he is fastened to pole 512. (Same reasoning as used elsewhere.) Which reminds me of the 1000 doors opened and closed puzzle, which is quite similar, but involves opening closed doors...

I have the PDF from WOTC kicking around, I can mail it to you. Send me an address to use.

You're correct. So are some others. Other people used the Queen pseudonym (as contracted, of course). Sturgeon did two, I think but I only recall Player on the Other Side. Vance might have; I don't know.

I did a rather lengthy campaign in a city where vampires were citizens (in the campaign, the city was built on the source of all magic, and it took a lot of effort to keep a dead body dead; all manner of creatures and monsters lived there, and eventually they all pursued the rights of...

Part of Macho Women With Guns, second edition, and also part of the Mongoose d20 version of MWWG. In case you weren't getting enough top-heavy looks-good-in-armor parody fun.

I won't disagree at all that the abstraction of combat in the d20 system can be considered to include all of these things. It can be, it does. I think the "expectations" part is the toughie, though. People who are specifically picking up a swashbuckling game have certain things that they want...

I think because the other Thieves World game didn't do well. (Or was it a Rolemaster setting book?) I haven't seen Thieves World on the bookshelves lately, either, so publishers may not think of it as a viable entity. Things that haven't been done--actually, if I could think of them, I'd be...

Hell, I'm enjoying how he's writing Canada, and I live on the other side of the border from you. Doesn't sound like Prime Minister Martin, so perhaps there's a hint we're not exactly as portrayed in this Story Hour. (Good work, X29; your additional payment will be in the mail!) And take your...

The dirigible is a cool idea, but fails (I think) on the modern aspect. Converted aircraft carrier, sailing the seas. WWII or later era ship, retrofitted by brilliant inventors to have better power supply. Satellite is another possibility, in a polar orbit so it covers every inch of the world...

Agreed, regardless of game system. Let's distinguish between classes and levels here; they don't have to go together, though of course they do in D&D. You're arguing about levels, it seems to me, and the concomitant increases in abilities and resources with increasing levels. Good question...

I presume you mean in the d20 systems. BTRC had Dreamtime for CORPS, which was kind of close to cavemen...average tech level put me in mind of Australian Aborigines (as the title is meant to do), no metal, and I always thought it was a pretty cool setting.

That's what the book calls "noble killing" -- killing of something human that is condoned (and of course the book never gets into killing demons, etc. You could argue that there would be a difference between a sludge monster and a zombie; the more human it looks, the higher the DC.) I agree...

I was reading On Killing, an interesting look at how many people actually fire weapons, and it is apparently quite low. Modern media be danged, most folks don't kill, they don't like to kill. I'd believe the values you get with a DC 15 roll. I'll track down the book and provide more info.

Oh, for heaven's sake If memory serves, that's not even real latin. That's the fake latin used by typesetters as filler text to look at layouts. Now, sort of related to the topic--I came in late. Someone want to tell me what the book of erotic fantasy is intended to be, so I can make up my...

Star Hero is part of the Hero Games line; you'll need the big fifth edition rulebook as well. That said, I think the Star Hero book is a marvelous overview of the various genres of SF, and it actually manages to complement GURPS Space. GURPS Space is one of the classics, and you can either...

Yup, but you might have to be a LiveJournal subscriber to read it. http://www.livejournal.com/users/princeofcairo/6418.html Oh, I like this. The only thing it lacks is a way to confront the TV exec at the end, which is what you want to do to close the circle. On the other hand, if he's using...

Yet another one. Ambulance driver who either causes accidents or problems or foresees them somehow. Ken Hite just posted on his blog a lovely analysis of Call of Cthulhu in which he basically says it runs off the same basic conflict as the Western