Search results

TSR's Spellfire and other cash grab card games, along with a very specific return policy from that period of time that let retailers send back unsold product for a refund are what killed it. The novels had nothing to do with it.

To the OP, Tales of the Valiant is just D&D 5E with some different subclass and ancestry options. It's got some specific rules tweaks that are slightly different, but you could easily have someone at the table bring a PC from the 2014 D&D PHB, the 2024 D&D PHB, Tales of the Valiant and...heck...

I have had success with this by turning the sound off and making sure captions are on. Solves my "watching a video at work" conundrum.

I have a weird suggestion: try finding a copy of Tunnels & Trolls and see if they can grokk it. T&T is not mechanically rigorous, but you can go from zero to hero with some luck easily. As GM its super easy to run, and you can control the power flow pretty easily. Combats are big dice pool rolls...

Pretty much. I recall the idea being that your # of attacks wasn't "individual swings" with a weapon but rather how many opportunities you had to make a strike. But then arrows were counted down with each attack roll, and ultimately I think most people equated 1 strike to 1 attack roll and so it...

My recollection from reading on the subject was not that you needed 50 arrows to down a target, but that you missed 49 times and then finally hit, usually taking the guy out with the single final shot.

Well....isn't that what Second Wind is for fighters (in 5E)? And a short rest burning hit dice? I thought this edition had already embraced that idea.

Probably because those tools will cut in to sales with licensed VTT/generators online already through Pathbuilder 2, Roll20, Demiplane, etc.

B&G has always been about prestige "high end collector" products. These are indeed aimed at whales, and sometimes I do wish I could get my hands on some of what they make but common sense kicks in and reminds me I have bills to pay and that money can buy a lot of other more useful stuff. But I...

This is something from my youth that, like records and 8-tracks, I have no interest in re-engaging with. But, like records, my son (and other quirky eccentrics of his generation) might eat it up as a nostalgia for a time they never knew that is now ancient history to them. So yeah, I suspect I...

I don't know what to tell you. There are some good books on the subject that can illustrate for you the prevailing attitudes of the time and how they were gradually changing if that will help; I can only provide anecdotal evidence as someone who cut their reading teeth on the fiction by actually...

I can tell you haven't played the BRP family of games. As a long time vet of both D&D and BRP/Call of Cthulhu/Runequest (though admittedly not the current generation of RQ) I can safely say that the notion of niche protection is not a factor in how these games play, and if you try playing RQ or...

I never had an issue with THAC0 until D&D 3E came out, and once I saw how it handled the new ascending AC process I could not unsee it. Going back to descending AC and THAC0 has been purely for grim nostalgia ever since. Like eating a bowl of old grits with stale bread to reminisce about the...

Well, I did state that fantasy fiction was allowing more women (e.g. le Guin) to use their full names without issue. Likewise, my point was that the 70's was the turning point for a lot of this....but the fact that it was still prevalent is indisputable. If it wasn't we wouldn't be having this...

I'd totally do it, but I'm a GM and when I get to play I tend to like the core conceits of classic D&D more than the flashy extras added on over the editions. However, I can tell you my player group is deeply invested in finding weird stuff to the extent that they hardly ever roll from the...

I have both but consider them two different takes on 5E. Tales of the Valiant is designed to be more closely compatible while still tweaking the experience...it kind of fits what I want out of a 5E clone better, honestly. A5E is more like a revamp of 5E, changing up how one thinks about it. I...

People seem to forget (and I include people my age who were alive back then) that most women who wrote in science fiction and fantasy genres had to abbreviate or even change their names. Go find a book by C.L. Moore that identified her as Catherine Lucille, or locate A.C. Crispin somewhere...

I started with Gamma World, then B/X D&D for all of about three months before I snagged the AD&D 1E books. Despite those being the early years, I spent more time in middle and high school with Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest, Dragonquest and other games until college when I picked up AD&D 2nd...

So if you go back to the (what I consider; YMMV) good old days of D&D style skill systems, I really felt D&D 3.5 and PF1E hit the sweet spot. Some of these skills are now "folded in" to other skills, or are accessible through feats, but in essence the skills I find I constantly wish were still...

That's funny, I was thinking of those exact movies when responding to this topic. Also very true, back then there was a diagetic focus on punishment rather than a "away from table" talk about it. Although, in defense of players in general I haven't had anyone try anything like that in literal ages.