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Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth."

4th edition works great for kids, if you're flexible and don't act the rules-lawyering DM. I've found lots of people who are otherwise paralyzed by RPGs are perfectly comfortable with "Here's a bunch of cards with your skills. You can do the green ones as many times as you want." I've had...

I played the Moldvay version in junior high, but I'm not sure i really "got" it. I probably spent more time reading about D&D than actually playing it. (I never played X2 Castle Amber, but man it was a fun read.) Then in high school, I played a couple of campaigns in first edition AD&D, and...

I think we remember that article very differently: Gary starts with the list of game play requirement and tries on a few different ideas before saying (despite quotes, I'm paraphrasing) "Hey, wait, if I use this Vancian Magic thing I can get the mechanics I want with a plausible explanation!" I...

But that's not an "in-game reason". Magic works the way it does in 1e (and 2e, and 3e) explicitly because of out-of-game reasons. Gygax wrote an entire article (Dragon #22) explaining that magic works the way it does because it makes the wargame/artillery aspect of wizards more the way he...

Right. What I don't understand about this entire discussion is the sort of hidden assumption that "The DM rolling a die to look up something on a loot table" is somehow less metagamey than the player and the DM collaborating to come up with a plausible continuation to the story they are...

One of the things that I love about 4e is that it just throws power gaming out the window. This s why I get confused about people saying 4e seemed "metagamey" to them, because in my experience fully half the time groups I was in were "playing" 3e and earlier, they were really just engaging in...

I have to say that I've loved 4e and haven't had any problems introducing it to newer players. But I was late to the party. (Played 1st edition years ago, and tried to get into 3.5 but didn't enjoy it because of the poor (IMO) balance).

This is pretty important to me, as well. "Just use the books" is in no way an adequate answer, IMO. As a DM, I believe in letting the robots help me with my campaigns. And my observation is that particularly for novice players being able to play "what if" with the character builder is hugely...