But blogs... are read...?

Message:

Perhaps you meant podcast?

Good (short) read.

I enjoyed the repeated point of "the rules were a framework," and "make it up, yourself, sport."

And I followed through to other articles in the series where the author was continually amazed by concept of "wing it."

We should send the dude a copy of Cutlass. Cutlass is, of course, all about winging it. My favorite single Cutlass moment is STILL:

RED: OK, that's a 6 in Phase B. Tony, how did you screw up the provisioning?

TONY: *thinks* I come back with a slave.

RED: (laughing) A SLAVE?

TONY: (in terrible Italian accent) You-a told me to come back with-a "sals" (sails). This is-a Sal!

Otherwise, it's the same thing we mock with current D&D... The need to create endless books to codify things that don't need to be codified. Fake it and have fun. 3/4 Dwarf? Oh, grow up, take your infra vision, and no CON bonus for you. Done.

Although one might say the line of two page games is getting out of hand. For the most part it's the same breakdown of four classes per game, four d6 tables to resolve actions, three classes get a bonus on one, a penalty on another, and one jack-of-all-trades with neither. Don't really need all the different "genres," but... Infinite genres of the same rules sell.

Take the "Open License' d20 rules, change the feats and call it a new game? Ok.

Guess that's where the settings come in. The strength of EPT wasn't the rules, it was that MAR Barker spent 40 years world building. Tolkien began writing Middle Earth in 1913. The Hobbit came out in 1937, LotR in 54. Again, decades just world building.

Settings sell.

So does sex, but, really, why is there the occasional attempt to codify sex into rules? I know which of my Cutlass dudes got laid a lot (Hugo), and which ones were celibates (Leon), and we didn't need to dice for Hugo to have a good time. If a story event could interpret as Hugo getting some, he got some, because Hugo would go get it. Perhaps only Hugo remembers Xanadu fondly...

Yours,