Recent content by pemerton

To me, this still seems to involve a bit of a non-sequitur - because a physical altercation can involve meaningful stakes other than fatality. I haven't done a lot of superhero RPGing, but in the first session of Marvel Heroic RP that I GMed, there was a pretty interesting fight between War...

This is an empirical conjecture. My experience doesn't bear it out. Yes, agreed.

Yes - Thor modified MouseGuard to play a bit more like classic D&D.

Defeat in combat doesn't have to mean death. I know that in D&D that's the default; but it's possible to narrate being dropped to zero hp in other terms. In 4e D&D, this is a possibility regardless of attack mode - instead the target is knocked unconscious. The one time I "TPKed" the PCs when...

The example I gave wasn't fudging dice: rather, making choices like "If the PC has AC 20, then give the NPC a +15 attack bonus" or "If the PC has 100 hp, then give the NPC 6d12 damage dice" or "If the PC has +15 Stealth, then give the NPC Passive Perception of 30". Stuff like that, where the...

Whether or not it is cheating would depend on the agreed rules. But the GM making the risks, the stakes, and the consequences be whatever they want, so that the players can't in any reliable way try and impact and control what is happening in the fiction, is (in my view) railroading.

I recently read something online that said that a D&D GM is not really bound by any rules: for instance, they're not bound in any meaningful way by AC rules, or hp rules, because they can specify whatever numbers they like as the attack bonus and damage dice of NPCs/creatures who attack the PCs...

At my GM school, every GM has to sit and watch at least two screenings of Warhol's Sleep, so they can really get the hang of verisimilitudinous narration.

The AD&D PHB says this (p 30): First, second, third, and even fourth level spells are granted to the cleric through meditation and devout prayer. This spell giving is accomplished by the lesser servants of the cleric's deity. Fifth, sixth, and seventh level spells can be given to the cleric...

I think this is the most obvious response to the "frivolous" thing. If it's not frivolous to grant the cleric spells so that they can go off hunting and looting, why is it frivolous to help them extract all the power they can from the DoMT? And if the Commune spell is able to give guidance as...

It's probably more like a "floodgates" argument than a slippery slope one. Personally, it seems to me that if a deity can cope with all the clerical prayers for spells every morning, a little bit of Communing hardly seems like it will bother them. Or to come at it another way: if a GM wants to...

I think you're thinking of this: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeons-dragons-has-done-away-with-the-adventuring-day.707237/post-9489723 800 posts later I still had posters - who were not present at an event that happened over 35 years ago now, and who know none of the participants, nor...

In Gygax's PHB and DMG, alignment is set out as a type of disagreement about means: lawful good people think that the best way to ensure "the good" (life, truth, beauty, wellbeing) is by way of relatively strict or at least clear social order/hierarchy; whereas chaotic good people think that the...

4e D&D has advice on correlating suitable heights of drops to PC levels - that, is, the potential damage from falling is incorporated into the general framework for assigning a level to threats/challenges. I don't think any earlier versions of D&D do this - I'm not sure about 5e D&D. In any...

I'm not sure what you mean by rules that make sense contextually but still allow players a great deal of freedom. You mention D&D and PF, and what is most distinctive about them is their intricate PC-building rules (including spells and magic items); and also perhaps their intricate wargame-y...