Recent content by Lanefan

I've seen DMs with PHs to loan out, usually accreted when players left the game and said "Here, keep this, I don't need it". Agreed. If you get into trying to collect old modules it can get costly real quick. Believe me. :)

Huh. I see Pathfinder-style AP play as much more modern, as Hickman-style play (what I saw of it, in the 80s) involved a lot of setting exploration. You couldn't play the Dragonlance modules, for example, without also in the process exploring a fair bit of Krynn (through both the adventures...

All that "evocative art" is useless and superfluous. The DM is the only person who is ever going to see it, and the DM - who is in theory using the map as a quick reference during play - is the one person who doesn't need to see it. I should be able to, at a quick glance, see on any map the...

They look nice and fancy etc. as art pieces but for DMing purposes a map isn't an art piece, it's a practical document. On the DCCRPG maps I've got it's way, waaay too hard to see the relevant details among all the extraneous (and unnecessary!) artwork. When I'm repeatedly asking myself "Is...

I haven't voted in the poll yet, because if I did my vote would be "neearly never" but for reasons completely opposite to the point you're trying to make. It's possible some of those "never" or "nearly never" votes are coming from the same place as mine would: we don't and largely can't...

Maybe I've lost track of the definitions of things but I'd have thought the two bolded pieces above would be at least vaguely synonymous: to me trad (being short for traditional) implies long-haul setting-exploration play a la 1e or BX. Can't help you there. :)

We're not talking about those "really into the hobby", though; we're talking about the new (and perhaps casual) group and what they need to get started and keep going. And for that one month it might well be that. But with a physical book, it's just for that one month; unlike a subscription...

And immediately brings out the all-too-obvious question: if F-MU Bob can cast in armour, why can't single-class MU Jenny cast in armour? Remember, 1e doesn't have armour proficiencies. Instead it has straight bans on certain armours for certain classes, with the clear rationale being that...

Their artwork in DCCRPG is fine but their maps - for purposes of ease of reading and practicality at the table - are in general the worst I've ever seen.

Thing is, unlike those other things, D&D is - or certainly can be - largely a one-time buy. You get the PH, some dice, a few character minis, and you're set for life as a player. One-time buy. The DM also needs to get the other books, maybe a few adventure modules, something (chalkboard...

"Always playing from 1-20" is a 3e thing. Prior to that, there wasn't really a defined capstone level despite the best attempts of 1e's "name level"; instead it was designed as - and seen as - open-ended. To echo @Thomas Shey , putting a year into designing a setting I'm only going to use for...

Or those like me, for whom "completing" a campaign is neither a goal nor an issue. As a player, I want to complete the individual adventures within a campaign and yet always feel I can assume there'll be another adventure afterwards; i.e. that the campaign will continue.

Perhaps, though in a typical setting 'adventurer' might be as ordinary a profession as 'astronaut' or 'nuclear physicist' here: exotic and unusual, sure, but well-known as an accepted thing a few people do. It's come up in my game fairly recently. There was a sailor in the party who knew a lot...

Canadian dollars or American?

Fair, though to me the game is about the story of the party (or parties, plural, if there's more than one going in the same campaign) rather than the specific characters, who come and go. Further, that story takes place in a setting of which the PCs are, first and foremost, ordinary...