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"Hasbro bought WotC in 1999 for about $325M." And then quickly sold off the D&D video game rights, which adds some irony to this bit of news.

That fits so well that I hope this was the artists original intent and then a suit came buy and said, "We gotta put star of the show on the front cover!"

Cognitive difference how a game rule is "supposed" to be can be a big hurdle. In teaching Cypher, a game that twists a lot of game rule conventions, people who have never played an RPG pick it up much faster than gamers who have set expectations of RPG rules and concepts. I'm guilty of it as...

Is it me or is there no PDF available for the core rules yet?

I'm ready to be nice and fix things, unless you hurt my friends, then I'll hurt you.

I think they should mine the latest Dr. Who format. An ensemble cast ( and production crew) that rotates out characters/showrunners every few years and slowly builds a library of bad guy costumes and effects over the seasons. Like perhaps the mind flayers are S1 baddies and then come back for...

Going back on topic a bit. One of my back in the day GMs did it by running long 6 hour sessions that included pot luck, but also by showering us with thousands - and then millions - of XP so that we went from Level 1 to 20 in one year with 1st ed AD&D . I also played a phanton cleric. So in...

This is the crux of D&D siren song of offering 20 levels and big numbers of XP, "You can spend years here in your setting," and I know some people have pulled it off.* But really I haven't personally seen a game go on for more than 2 years. * And even then we've discovered that some GMs don't...

If there is one change that seems to be happening is how the phrase CPRG for computer rpgs is coming back and more people are dropping the "tt" from the phrase ttRPG. It always seemed backward to designate the original hobby instead of the spin-off.

For years, I think many gamers (me included) had this idea of doing a Youtube RPG channel and then blew it off before streaming and minecraft set up the pitch for Critical Role to swing for the fences. And in hindsight, it seems easy to kicking yourself thinking it could have been you earning...

Best then to sneak in the sci-fi stuff with a sci-fi 5e engine. https://espergenesis.alligatoralleyentertainment.com/rulebooks/core-manual/

Probably the biggest urge to switch game systems (beyond gamer ADHD) is to avoid burn out. D&D is not just the game system but now its own genre and tropes. Just switching to Esper Genesis (a 5e engine for SciFi ) was a breath of fresh air. We went from dungeon crawls to heists and even more...

Again, kill fees (where the writer gets some compensation even if the project is killed) were invented for a reason. And for projects as big as WotC tackles, kill fees can be a good insurance policy (since the fee would have probably been smaller than the settlement they are now locked into.)...

Back in the day, I hated random tables. At the time, for me, it seemed their only function was as themed "ticking timebomb," to either motivate players to keep hustling through a dungeon or feed the XP grind - or both. It didn't even occur to me that I could pick off the list instead of...

Quick tangent: I vote for video game RPGs to be called C(omputer)RPGs again and ttRPGs to be simply called RPGS. It's now getting silly that the original hobby has to have the designator because of inertia. And really it's even a tad quicker by typing one letter (C) vs two (tt).

As for many games of that era, it typically outlasts its welcome long before it's actually finished. And as another artifact of that era, too many players felt obligated to play to the end even when non one else was having fun anymore but the eventual winner and second place contender. If more...

This one was much cheaper and more modular, but it was also more DIY. It was popular enough to a second KS. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stonehavenmini/pop-up-miniature-terrain-kit But for saving space and ease of setup, pop up terrain needs more love.

Their first round of genre books seemed more like 80% genre setting (though usually with a twist like Fantasy but with demigods, or supers but with psychedelic 80s, or SF with marooned time travelers) and some bits for a more generic game. So far in this second round, these are much more genre...

I point to Appendix N ... and Hobbits ... and Deities and Demigods, 1st printing. Gamers steal and mishmash their media since the beginning so the more things change ... When I teach newbies, I describe CRPGs like movies. You got a visual feast, but things have limits due to budgets and...

Very few games last like that and despite the evidence, players still hold out hope for that. Even weirder, you have to switch gears every 5 levels or so anyway because the power level changes.