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Okay, so I was kicking around an idea of trying to strike a balance between the lethality of games like the various OSR systems, Shadowdark or early editions of D&D with the more durable characters of 4e, 5e and the like, and I kinda hit on an idea that preserves the simplicity of hit points...

Prompted by another thread, I thought it would be interesting to take the temperature of the community on this one. Because I’m willing to bet there’s variation.

Okay, so I've been kicking around the idea of a home-brew wound system that would work for Shadowdark, 5e, or many other editions of D&D. My buddy and I were having a discussion about various mechanics for damage tracking and noted that the nice part about Hit Points is that they're simple, you...

Okay, this is another "let's get people talking" post. And I know everyone will have very different answers to this, but I'd be interested to know if there's any trends... Skill systems feel like one of the most divisive subjects in RPGs. The earliest editions of D&D had a solidly defined...

Okay, I don't know if this is too "out there," but I was having a conversation with one of my RPG-nerd buddies after sword class last night, and we started talking about how different games handle different things. As we started talking about creating systems to handle the different types of...

One of the things I find myself frequently going back to these days is the oft-quoted that “A session of D&D is 30 minutes of fun stretched out to fill 3 hours.” And while I don’t entirely agree with the ratio, the simple fact is that both D&D and all other tabletop RPGs definitely have slow...

So, I know that this is going to produce wildly divergent answers, but I'm sure everyone has thought about what their perfect RPG looks like. And I'm sure that everyone's answers are a little bit different. But with all the new games arising from the OGL kerfuffle, I thought I'd throw up a...

Does anyone other than me still have their "Alternity" books sitting around? I think today, Alternity is best remembered for its "Dark*Matter" setting, rather than the system itself. But one of the things that struck me recently is that Alternity clearly heavily influenced the design of Dungeons...

I know this is less-developed than the typical topic here, but I thought I'd solicit some feedback. I'm working on designing my first fantasy setting for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (mostly for my own use for now), and I'm really thinking about how I want to handle magic and spells...

So, this is not one more thread about making combat in RPGs more tedious. It's my personal thoughts about how to strike the right balance between "realism" (or verisimilitude) and playability. Obviously, this varies greatly from group to group, depending on both your tastes and how well versed...

Okay, so as someone who studies European Martial Arts and swordplay, I'm a bit bothered by the "fantasy take" on armor and weapons in "Savage Worlds Adventure Edition." So I decided to rework and fill in the list of armors and medieval weaponry, with the goal of changing as little as possible...

So, there was an article on the WotC site a couple weeks ago that they didn't know what to do with the fighter class because it was "insufficiently well-defined" or some such. I think the problem may be that, as they've tried to define the niche of other classes, WotC has largely defined the...

Realizing that D&D Next is a long way from being published, I wanted to put forward the notion of a race that I really think the game needs to work in. And that's the "Giant" race. Personally, I really like Goliaths and would love to see them join the core - except that I completely hate their...

Well, I hope this counts as problems and/or issues. Frankly, I'm disappointed. I was hoping for a new 4e-compatible version of the Mentzer box. This isn't that, and I think WotC has missed the point of a Starter Set. Again. Look, maybe this is marketing's fault, but stop throwing up starter...

Okay, since there's already a stickied thread charting errors here, I won't delve into that. What I'd like to use this thread for is compiling suggestions to WotC for improvements in the next version of the set. What did you like about the box, what didn't you like? I'll start. I love the solo...

So, I noticed some thing about this product while browsing the report from the Critical Hits blog. Since there seems to be some confusion, I thought I'd cross-post the relevant quote. So my guess is that "common" items are things like magic swords, armor, & implements, potions of healing and...

Okay, this is something I've been playing with for a while. While I like PCs getting magic items and fat loot, I don't like the degree to which PCs have to be not just some of the world's most power people, but among the richest as well. While it can be neat to have high-level adventurers be...

I'm not trying to start a fight, I'm honestly posing this as a question. Hopefully, we can all state our opinions non-confrontationally. I guess one could make an argument that D&D's core rules elements, since 1974, have been: 1. Medieval fantasy roleplaying. 2. the d20 for combat resolution...

There's a new Design & Development article up. It covers "traps" as was promised two weeks ago. So, maybe we'll still get all those promised articles for Dragon #361. You can find it here. For those of you not yet registered, here's the text: If anyone from WotC objects, I'll pull the text...

Okay, there have been a lot of threads about what impact Star Wars Saga Edition might have on D&D, either come 4e, or before. What follows is not my attempt to predict what 4e will look like, but rather to rescope D&D with Saga-inspired simlicity in mind. First off, there's the issue of...