Recent content by Lanefan

I've no problem if they suicide a bad character, but it has to get into play first and die while adventuring. Hell, it's what would most likely have happened to it anyway: the character finds out the hard way that he's just not quite up to the task of adventuring. It's called sorting the wheat...

As a player, I want to see my character sheet but I've neither the right nor the desire to see any of: --- the DM-side tables and charts I'm rolling on --- the combat matrix or saving-throw tables --- stats and mechanical information about the opponent (just tell us what our characters...

Yes, and most of us would almost certainly do just that. And yet, when we do that we as DMs are removing from the players a power (however minor) that the game rules flat-out state they should own. My point - and I'm making it not for the first time here - is that putting the DM in the...

I disagree with the causality, if only because there were many people* with strong opinions on the game long before people started overthinking stuff (or doing anythng else) on the internet. * - you'd probably say the same if you'd sat through all the game-related arguments I did in the 1980s. :)

Yep, pretty much this. My only issue if-when a player intentionally sets out to play something bizarre is that others will want to do likewise, leading to a party of even-greater-scale misfits in the setting than would already be the case while at the same time rather defeating the point of...

I don't think using natural language a terrible choice at all; in that you can use natural language and still keep it tight. In the features we've been discussing, for example, it'd take changing maybe 2 or 3 words in each one to make the intent crystal clear while still keeping it natural and...

I suspect (but am open to correction if wrong) that their concern is that the exact phrasing might force them into a position of either: --- having to allow those features to work everywhere every time, or --- having to disappoint one or more players who, having quite reasonably interpreted...

In the games I DM: henches have been (IMO surprisingly) rare, mostly because the players, thinking in-character, don't want to have to worry about keeping them upright, keeping them paid, seeing to their training, and so forth. Of late, however, there's been a trend toward hiring captives or...

The 1e DMG kinda waves at the idea in passing. There's probably enough there to allow a with-it DM to build a workable system on to, but as written it's very sparse.

Based solely on my own experience I disagree as to the bolded: the campaign I'm currently running is the only 1e or 1e-adjacent campaign I've ever seen that doesn't use psyonics. And I suppose I should probably note somewhere here that a long time ago (as in, around when I first strted DMing) I...

As in, do I allow or even encourage metagaming? No.

Yep. Those with weak psyonics are often referred to as "psyonic punching bags" - having those abilities can be a curse as well as a blessing! :)

By means of challenging the PC in the fiction. The challenge to the player is corollary to that. That's just an alternate means of resolving the same challenge (and it ain't the PC making the roll... :) )

Ideally yes; they should as far as possible think as their characters would think. This shouldn't impact things like puzzle-solving in that the PCs can, on average, solve puzzles just as well as the players can. That said, for things like language-based riddles in English I just assume that a...

I agree with what you're saying here but I'd flip this bit around: it's about challenging the PCs first and foremost, and the challenge for the players then becomes how to overcome the challenges faced by said PCs. And that sometimes means the players - thinking as their characters - have to...