Recent content by Swanosaurus

Well, to look at the upside, that would be the day I could finally stop following new releases and just keep playing happily with my printed books and my phyisical dice and pencils for the rest of me life, knowing that all that other stuff that's going on out there doesn't pertain to me anymore.

Don't beat yourself up! It didn't connect with me the first time ... I've read it a total of four times, because I translated it into German (there was an older translation, but they wanted to do a new one, and I got to do it). It took me that many times to really appreciate it, and I only got...

Samuel R. Delany, Nova. It's fun, it's intellectually satisfying, it prefigures tons of core concepts of later science fiction, it is supremely well written. I'm not sure if it is my favourite sf novel, but if I have to pick one single best one, it's Nova.

To get further sidetrecked: How do people feel about diegetic/extradiegetic metacurrency? Personally, I'm fine with metacurrency (though I prefer if there is only one, in player's hands), but I really don't like it if it's turned into something diegetic. I yet have to so an RPG where this...

I found myself rotating back to the more "open" games I was used to in the nineties, the ones that didn't got totally overboard with the rules, but strived to provide you with a reasonable list of tools to create all kind of characters and resolve all kinds of adventurous situations within the...

That's one that I didn't get on the page, as well. So effectively, you just get a +6 in your primary attributes, right? But instead, they choose to express that as TNs differing between 12 and 18, depending on what you roll, and act as if that would be an innovation that changes everything ...

I think there are a few RPGs that come up with a cool, innovative idea that they love, build their system around it ... and then it turns out that while the system is solid, the idea is not so great after all. But they stick to it, because they love it and it's part of their core identity. Now...

Generally, I like roll-under, because it seems most straight-forward to me. My score directly tells me my success range, without any maths. But I am also a big fan of some roll-high-systems, their obvious advantage being exploding dice and how they make things more swingy, because I like swingy...

Actually, that doesn't bother me that much ... they may be rounding errors, but they are there, which is sufficient for me. I'm not bitter about how it all turned out - it's more that the whole "let's see how the market works and do what is required to come out on top" approach is kind of...

I won't claim moral superiority, but once you end up learning several languages - for whatever reason -, you realize how rewarding it is. And the same goes for RPG systems - they do things differently, and like languages, they do illuminate each other. So in the RPG market as well as in the...

Possibly ... I'm in Germany, and I think d20 not had that kind of sway over the market here back then, so I kind of didn'gt really notice it. Actually, now with 5e it's a lot more extreme (also, I'm mainly looking at the English-speaking market these days).

You're right, and I'm fine with all of that. I'm not taking issue with the net effect of the OGL, it's great. I'm just taking issue with Dancey's arrogant rhethorics. To me, it sounds quite clearly as if he was saying: "the OGL will do away with tons of competing systems, leading to a gazillion...

Well, to someone who isn't that interested in D&D, the difference boils down to "should we ruin your hobby?", or "Should we almost ruin your hobby?"

But you do see how saying "the problem is competitive systems" (talking about the the problem of RPGs in general), taken together with the idea that you want to drive D&D PHB sales as high as possible, basically means that the best course of action is to do something that will drive all other...

It wasn't a side-effect, because it didn't actually happen. It was, however, his stated goal (at least as per the interview quoted). I'm just happy that he miscalculated.