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I keep thinking that I'm done with my exploration of the rules of my youth. There are three things in 1e AD&D that I don't think can be fixed. The first two I knew about. The third one is coming as a bit of a surprise to me, even though I always knew it to be awkward and clunky. If all the...

At the time I was playing AD&D, I never really questioned the demi-human level caps which in retrospect surprises me a little considering how much I did question and try to change. However, whether I had a bias then or now, I still don’t feel a need to actually eliminate the mechanic. Were I to...

This is going to be a work in progress. I never liked the Assassin class back in the day and generally forbade it at my table. No one seemed to miss it, and I only once played with an Assassin in the party (a single session with a group that all claimed to be Satanists for the shock value I...

Barbarian The barbarian class is a sub-class of fighter which – having grown up in lands far from civilization - is adept at the many skills necessary for survival in a hostile wilderness. These skills include rapid movement, climbing, use of many weapons, uncanny intuition, and many skills...

Grappling is a controversial topic in RPGs. People are always lobbying for simpler rules for grappling, rather than it having its own subsystem. The simpler the system though, the more it's disassociated. Personally, I feel that grappling is sufficiently different than "standard" striking...

Perhaps because everyone is talking about that fight scene in “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” and the fact that I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wish I had used for rules in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it’s only natural that I’ve started thinking a lot about the much maligned “Weapon vs. AC...

When I got the chance to play I almost always played a thief. I didn't really think hard about balance or optimizing until I was well into college with a lot of years of experience behind me. And when I did think about it, I realized how frustrating, stupid, and underpowered the thief class...

So, perhaps not surprisingly, since Star Wars generally seems to occur in a universe where outer space has air and gravity, there has been very little mention of exposure to a vacuum in published Star Wars material. But I play a bit grittier of a Star Wars game than most, and while I've played...

For a long time I had considered the WEG D6 Force Point to be one of the more elegant mechanics in gaming. My positive impression of it was formed very early, from the first time I saw one used in my very first WEG Star Wars game more than 30 years ago. We were all for the most part playing...

Something said in the May the 4th thread about celebrating Star Wars RPGs triggered my curiosity and that's how much do you allow canon characters to interact with (and potentially overshadow) PCs and how much do you rely on your own characters? Which canon characters have you used in your...

Ever since Dread came out I was excited by it and excited by the reports I was hearing about it. I even bought the rules shortly after the game came out and did my best to run a game of it that didn't really go over well. So I have long wanted to be a player in a Dread game with an experienced...

So, while I had some good experiences at Origins, I did have some experiences that didn't sit well with me. I'm principally ranting here, so if you don't want to listen to a rant, ignore this. Because it's a rant, I'm not naming participants, though if you have enough knowledge of the...

Sell me on the best events... The best GMs... The best games or game systems to try... The most fun things you did in the past.

I normally buy myself a few treats for GM's Day. This year, I'm uncertain what to buy. Please make suggestions on how I ought to spend my money.

So, what I would like is suggestions for game systems that are easy to run and which have extremely good introductory adventures. My daughter is away in college and is very much missing her gaming group from high school, but sort of realizing that its likely that if she's going to game with her...

A nerd forum I once upon a time was highly active on upgraded its forums recently (by which I mean, a few years ago, because it has been a while since I was active) and in the process dropped a lot of its historical threads, particularly those of the period I was active. As a result, poof, a...

I've ended up avoiding battle mats for the last 3 years. For those of you using virtual tabletops like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, what is your experience? What virtual table should I be investing in for the best battle mat experience for traditional dungeon crawls?

On term that I use a lot is “Illusionism”. The standard definition of “Illusionism” is GM’s offering player’s a game choice which appears to matter but which does not in fact matter because the GM uses his role as secret keeper and as narrator of the fiction to hide the player’s lack of agency...

Goblonia was published in September of 2022 and is one of the best Indy games I’ve ever encountered. In terms of the desirability of having this in your collection, I’d put this up alongside classics like Dogs In the Vineyard, Ten Candles, or Dread. While it’s not the most original game you...

I just realized that ChatGPT is familiar with the "Seven Sentence NPC" methodology and is capable with guidance of producing seven sentence NPCs that fit named constraints. While the current version shows a lot of limitations, this might well soon be a game changer for me in the reoccurring...