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It’s more basic than that. I was just pointing out that WotC did in fact have protection for Magic. I don’t know how aggressively they enforced their rights, but they did sue Cryptozoic over Hex: Shards of Fate.

Right now, it’s difficult for me to speak to what I want the GM part of my homebrew system to look like because actually writing it comes after getting the core and customization right. I do know that I’ll need procedures layered on top of what the core provides. For example, crafting. I have a...

That’s basically what I’m doing. There’s a robust core resolution process (or that’s what I aspire to have), and characters with some amount of customization. While I have classes, they’re very stripped down (less than half a page A5). Most of your customization comes from spending EXP on...

In our case, it was more that they were used to situations the rules covered being foiled by adjudication. When Deirdre used food to lure a bulette away from their settlement, she knew if she got a success that she would do it and not suffer some “well, actually” consequence. When everyone...

I had to convince my players they could use their dead retainer’s corpse as bait. They were so convinced there was no hope, and they had to fight to the death. 😵 Having reliable mechanics they can trust in my homebrew system has effected a big change in their behavior. They’re much more willing...

My system is just a mess of notes right now, so I have no idea what the final page count will be. My goal is to keep the player-facing rules low. That doesn’t include character customization, setting information, GM procedures, or stuff like that. All of that builds on the core though. A chase...

Thanks for the clarification. That you have this covered elsewhere makes sense. However, I’ve played games where that’s not the case, so I didn’t want to make assumptions. B/X and Pathfinder 2e have chase rules, but there’s no trigger. That’s a problem because players will convince themselves...

What exactly constitutes a “mini-campaign”? As I noted in post #10, I’m aiming for a small core, but we’re around the forty session mark. I have no idea how many more sessions we’ve got before we finish (because that’s up to the players), but if I had to guess, it would be at least as many more...

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5662332A/en

Somewhat related: if you’re going to release PDFs, at least make sure they have functional table of contents in the PDF. Even better would be cross-references, but that’s considerably more work than providing a ToC.

I prefer A5-sized books, but digest is fine if the alternative is a traditionally larger size. In terms of page count, I want something succinct and easy to read and use. I don’t want totally dry text. While OSE is easy to ingest, it’s a pretty bland read. In terms of organization, I’d like to...

@pemerton appears to be denying the claim it’s inimical to immersion. I may be wrong, but you both seem to agree.

I’m not following because the other designs don’t do what I want. If I were willing to use those systems, it’d save me a lot of work. I got by for years tinkering with and modifying other games, but I ended up in a situation where I had the opportunity to make something that does do what I want...

By “establish situation”, I refer to situational authority. When the players say they are going into the dungeon, it’s the GM’s job to describe what they see. When they go into a bar looking for a contact, it’s the GM’s job to describe who is there and how the contact behaves as they approach...

I’m not sure whether or not you’re saying my system wouldn’t be to your taste, which is fine if not, but one thing I do want to clarify is that I am trying to systematize as much of the resolution process as possible. I say as much as possible and not fully because the GM does need the ability...

The Elusive Shift touches on this. Early versions of D&D used transcripts structured as dialogues as a teaching tool, which Peterson suggests comes from Korns’s Modern War in Miniature. This is how Peterson describes play in that game. The core idea of the referee reached D&D through other...

I’ve been running (or attempting to run) hexcrawls for years. I can’t recall whether I read that back then when I got started or here later, but it looks familiar. Regardless, I don’t agree that those are the only remedies to the Quantum Ogre problem, which is something I discovered while...

“As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of X …” and “(I think) X should be …” seem to be saying the same thing to me. Baker’s phrasing is provocative, but I don’t think it’s hard to discern his meaning (so not esoteric). I also want to note that he’s drawing a contrast with live negotiation and...

I think it makes sense for the kind of conflict Baker was incorporating in the games he was developing at the time, but it’s possible his thinking has evolved. He posted an article a couple of days ago about conflict and task resolution that went on to discuss other types of resolution (that are...

I’m having trouble following the logic in this discussion. The quote @pemerton posted was Baker’s saying why he thinks RPGs have rules — that as far as he was concerned, they served this particular function relating to the unwelcome and unwanted. Maybe he’s right, or maybe he’s not, or maybe...