Mark said:
1.) What is the best number of players at the table, whether as a DM or player yourself?
2.) How often should you be able to game in an ideal world?
3.) How long should those sessions be?
4.) The poll handled percentage of Crunch to Flavor, but what are some of the specifics behind your vote?
5.) If you could choose the single best next book to become available to you, what would it be, what form would it be in (hardback, softback, PDF), and how much would that book cost (please be reasonable)?
1) I'd say 6 players. No huge pressure for any one person to fulfill X, Y, or Z role; good flexibility; folks can feel free to play classes that aren't strictly meat-shield, melee-monster, archer-of-doom, blaster, healer, sneak, or trap-handler; and a few absent or inattentive players won't necessarily ruin or cancel the session. Not overly hard to keep track of, and allows for a good amount of different interactions and relationships between PCs (not everyone has to be tight-knit, or dependable, or otherwise mesh perfectly).
2) Ideally, 2-4 times per week, so once every 2-3 days depending on occurance of burnout.
More realistically, once per week is still good.
3) 4-hour sessions are good. 2-3 hours is okay if playing frequently, and an occasional all-night or all-afternoon session would be cool.
4) I voted 40/60 for C/F..... Races, classes, and magic/psionic/special items could use a goodly amount of flavor to help get a feel for them, to define them, and to give some history on them. Territories, nations, organizations, and such could use significant flavor. Monsters could use a goodly amount of flavor, but huge amounts are generally unnecessary, wasteful, or uninteresting. Feats, skills, and such need little flavor. Spells and normal items could use a decent amount of descriptive flavor and background.
5) Transformers: Robots In Disguise/More Than Meets The Eye: The RPG. *geekout* Don't care if it's D20 or not, as long as it's not done by White Wolf, nor done for HERO, GURPS, Palladium, or Fuzion, since I'd probably never bother to get it if done by/for those groups/systems. Just not my cup of tea, those ones. Mechamorphosis is cool, but I'd love an official, full-blown Transformers RPG that could cover classic TF and at least some of the variant TF series that followed (one or two of them, such as Beast Wars, could possibly be somewhat worthwhile to use, though classic TF is the best). It'd have to be hardback, with really good binding to endure lots of use, and I would have to go on a berserk rampage if the art wasn't all-around both good and full-color (don't care if some or all of it is anime style or more classic/realistic, I just wouldn't stand for bad art or measly monochromatic art getting into Pure Awesomeness In Paper Form). I'd want a large, thorough, well-thought-out book, so $40-50 USD would be quite acceptable, and I would probably even be willing to shell out $60-80 USD if it really was Pure Awesomeness In Paper Form done right. Otherwise (not done right or absurdly expensive), said berserk rampage of total destruction and Unicron-level-unstoppability would have to ensue. I'd find a way, somehow.
