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I more often than not am a "homebrew puritan," insofar as I don't consciously use any published setting material* and never use published adventures. The kind of fantasy found in most D&D worlds isn't interesting to me. Once in a while I'll run Spelljammer with as much setting material as...

It's neat to hear where the idea came from! While it has some merit, I don't think it was all that well done in 4e and 3.5 naming conventions, alas. What seems to have been missing was the next step, ensuring that the resulting compound rolled off the tongue in modern english. Magic the...

The OGL and 3.0 were developed in concert, and from the outset the hope was that d20 would develop into a generic system. Indeed, the generic system. It took Wizards themselves quite a while to release d20 Modern and it was pretty much their only foray into non-D&D, non-Star Wars d20, but the...

I don't like... (Well, pretty much anything but Bounded Accuracy, and even with that the implementation looks wonky. It seems like it's going to be a terrible system. But specifically:) "Natural language" instead of clean templating; this is an instant unsell Removal of proportionate healing...

I voted "no" since if I were forced to pick one I'd probably give the nod to the FATE Accelerated version of FATE. D&D 4 would at least be in the running, though.

Why do you think this, Mike? The worst mechanical problems with 3e (the imbalance between spellcasters and non-casters) and 4e (the relative weakness of the paladin and warlock, some poorly worded ranger powers that ended up needing errata) were both in the first Player's Handbook. In two...

Pink Flowers: Stat + Roll, roll twice and take the best result if you have the skill This bounds the math while making skilled characters more reliable.

See, I don't agree with this at all. What's wrong with HP as Gygax described them in the 1e DMG? They represent a grab bag of things that set PCs apart, they represent the toughness of huge beasts, they represent the supernatural vitality and sheer presence of powerful demons - it's the fact...

I would generally fit it under "skill in combat and similar life and death situations," but that reflects my preferring Int-based to Cha-based Warlords. Morale was a separate set of rules in AD&D. The important thing is that HP do not equal physical resilience.

It does, however, specify that HP are not simply the amount of physical punishment a character can take. It doesn't call out morale as being part of that, either, so one can feel free to interpret it as totally not allowing that one thing you don't like and declare victory, if that's what one...

The original rules are fine. If the player wanted to throw his character's ranged weapon when the guard came in range, he should have readied an action. (I know this is explicitly possible in 3e and 4e D&D, but I don't remember offhand if it's called out in other versions.) If the guard won...

You're right about combat not being a major source of fiero in OD&D, but I'd say it was at least perceived to be a source of it in 3e, and in 4e it's very much intended to be the primary source. I certainly find it to be such in both those games, although the latter to a greater extent. Also, I...

At the end of the day, whether a class called warlord can heal or not, whether a class without magic can heal or not, they're moving away from proportionate healing. And doing so, apparently, because they believe there are a significant number of customers who won't accept what HP have...

For me to even consider buying D&D Next, the Warlord class would have to be: 1. Extant. It's my favorite class in all of D&D, and its inclusion or exclusion makes a statement about whether my interests are remotely connected to what Next is trying to achieve. 2. Potentially a purely martial...

People in any stance can be dicks, and the discourse around RPGs encouraged a culture of enshrining one playstyle and denigrating another for decades. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are people who not only want to play in pawn stance but go out of their way to disrupt actor or author...

I think it's important to at least try to distinguish between three categories of player. First are those who are actively disruptive, either by refusing all calls to leave their safe zone and engage with the game (like the disruptive Turtle mentioned above), or by engaging with it only in a...

I'm happy with the games I'm currently playing (Dresden Files RPG, D&D 4e and Call of Cthulhu*), but I feel there's a fairly strong upward trend in RPG design, so new games are always welcome. I'd love to get a group together for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, for instance, and I'm still interested...

If you're specifically looking for motion-based play, you really have no choice but to go with the Wii. Third party developers have largely ignored the possibilities of these control schemes - shovelware aside - so you have to rely on first party titles. Microsoft has mostly produced their own...

Add me to the list of people interested in hearing others' experiences. Hopefully in a month or so, I'll be able to share my own, since as soon as I get my cover art squared away I'll be self-publishing a novel in this way.

The most effective recurring villain I ever had in a game was an agent of an enemy country in a fantasy action-espionage game. He encountered the players in their first mission and by the time a fight broke out, his side had overwhelming force. The PCs were in a fishing trawler, he had an...