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I found myself rotating back to the more "open" games I was used to in the nineties, the ones that didn't got totally overboard with the rules, but strived to provide you with a reasonable list of tools to create all kind of characters and resolve all kinds of adventurous situations within the...

That's one that I didn't get on the page, as well. So effectively, you just get a +6 in your primary attributes, right? But instead, they choose to express that as TNs differing between 12 and 18, depending on what you roll, and act as if that would be an innovation that changes everything ...

I think there are a few RPGs that come up with a cool, innovative idea that they love, build their system around it ... and then it turns out that while the system is solid, the idea is not so great after all. But they stick to it, because they love it and it's part of their core identity. Now...

Generally, I like roll-under, because it seems most straight-forward to me. My score directly tells me my success range, without any maths. But I am also a big fan of some roll-high-systems, their obvious advantage being exploding dice and how they make things more swingy, because I like swingy...

Actually, that doesn't bother me that much ... they may be rounding errors, but they are there, which is sufficient for me. I'm not bitter about how it all turned out - it's more that the whole "let's see how the market works and do what is required to come out on top" approach is kind of...

I won't claim moral superiority, but once you end up learning several languages - for whatever reason -, you realize how rewarding it is. And the same goes for RPG systems - they do things differently, and like languages, they do illuminate each other. So in the RPG market as well as in the...

Possibly ... I'm in Germany, and I think d20 not had that kind of sway over the market here back then, so I kind of didn'gt really notice it. Actually, now with 5e it's a lot more extreme (also, I'm mainly looking at the English-speaking market these days).

You're right, and I'm fine with all of that. I'm not taking issue with the net effect of the OGL, it's great. I'm just taking issue with Dancey's arrogant rhethorics. To me, it sounds quite clearly as if he was saying: "the OGL will do away with tons of competing systems, leading to a gazillion...

Well, to someone who isn't that interested in D&D, the difference boils down to "should we ruin your hobby?", or "Should we almost ruin your hobby?"

But you do see how saying "the problem is competitive systems" (talking about the the problem of RPGs in general), taken together with the idea that you want to drive D&D PHB sales as high as possible, basically means that the best course of action is to do something that will drive all other...

It wasn't a side-effect, because it didn't actually happen. It was, however, his stated goal (at least as per the interview quoted). I'm just happy that he miscalculated.

In Germany, Bielefeld is the city that doesn't exist. I know people who claim to have been there, but clearly, they have been duped.

I'm slowly re-reading the HARP core book and the Folkways supplement, and their really nice rpg books (both in their own, very different ways). The system is old-fashioned, sure, but not more so than other systems from the same family (Against the Darkmaster, Novus, Fantasy Express), and...

For now, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been abandoned - the Banecroft adventure just came out, there's still Phil Masters Steampunk setting in the works, which, according to the ICE newsletter, is pretty much dine, and a rules supplement by Nicholas Caldwell (Something Wicked, Something Wondrous)...

Well, it's probably very relative. I was just going by their drivethru publisher site (which is, I think, their only venue, so it should be representative), where the first 8 ICE bestsellers are Rolemaster, followed by one brand-new HARP book, then two RM again, then the HARP fantasy core book...

It's two years later, and I find myself eyeing HARP every few months. I still enjoy reading around in the core rules and in the Folkways supplement, and I really like chargen in HARP - it has all the right building blocks and offers flexibility without being overwhelming. I still wouldn't know...

That's actually something I could get behind!

Less to 2d6 (though I do think a bell curve feels more appropriate to Traveller than a more swingy one-die resolution mechanism). But the Lifepath generation that can produce meaningfully different levels of competence in multiple areas and the fact that in Traveller, there is very little...

Isn't modern D&D more like "everything except maybe the caster classes are fighters, and the fighter is the most badass fighter"? Usually they all can hold their own in an armed conflict, right in the thick of things. That's what I would call a fighter. So the non-fighter classes are basically...

I've been a fan of the Wormskin zine despite it being D&D, and now I've read through the Dolmenwood Player's Book and it's the first RPG that sells me on the virtues of Old School. I don't know what exactly it is - part of it is certainly making the x in d6 thing an overarching mechanism and...