D&D: What it really is

[Gyrit]

This maybe be because I have almost no experience with any of this, but Rifts sounds fucking awesome.

[Xachariah]

Don't forget anal circumference.

http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/fatal.html < - The review of it, by somebody who is amusingly abusive.

[Ramidel]

Kevin Siembieda's masturbating philosophical and "my playtest group was so cool!" ranting is only part of the problem. (And the fact that he cannot restrain himself from raising the twink bar every supplement is a problem shared by 90% of game designers. See: White Wolf and Baali. I rest my case.)

Furthermore, playing it with the corebook -is- really too limited for the setting (since the setting -is- a kitchen sink from hell), so you can't use my solution to White Wolf and Wizards and just play with the necessary material. Furthermore, you pretty much need to rip the system's guts out if you want to convert it from rolled stats to point-buy, since each character variation has different rules on how you roll the damn dice.

If you like awesome heroes, taken up to eleven, piloting giant robots that punch out Cthulhu, try Exalted. Oh, and the twink bar is set at near-maximum on the first book, and the only set that really scales that up is Dreams of the First Age (which has every right and business to scale things up).

[Eos]

FATAL.

You can't really bring up FATAL when you're talking about other RPGs, that would be like if Roeper suddenly started talking about scat porn during that little review show he has with the tubby guy.

[Moondog]

FATAL: The Godwin's Law of RPGS.

[Eos]

Kevin Siembieda's masturbating philosophical and "my playtest group was so cool!" ranting is only part of the problem. (And the fact that he cannot restrain himself from raising the twink bar every supplement is a problem shared by 90% of game designers. See: White Wolf and Baali. I rest my case.)

Furthermore, playing it with the corebook -is- really too limited for the setting (since the setting -is- a kitchen sink from hell), so you can't use my solution to White Wolf and Wizards and just play with the necessary material. Furthermore, you pretty much need to rip the system's guts out if you want to convert it from rolled stats to point-buy, since each character variation has different rules on how you roll the damn dice.

I missed this. To be fair to The Kevin, Rifts is more of an artist's RPG, in that everything interesting and cool about it was created by the artists, especially Larry MacDougall, who from what I understand, did most of the concept work and created such icons of the game as the Glitter Boys.

The twink factor is easy to deal with, just don't allow or tweak anything you think is too powerful or broken. Also what's wrong with rolled stats? Point buy often takes too damn long. I always liked the house rule of rolling a few numbers and afterwards assigning them to particular stats, instead of first rolling strength and being required to stick with that number, etc

The worst part about Rifts, I think, is the alignment system, not for any mechanical reason, but because it is so embarassingly written.

[Alec]

What is D&D... I think it's roughly the same as with the Keep. The people that play it make DnD what it is. When it comes down to it, the rules are only there to provide a stable framework for the game. Like the mods of tK, they're there to keep things from going out of hand. Mentioning something like F.A.T.A.L. in the same breath as DnD would be an insult not to the system of DnD but to the people playing it. :p

Even if F.A.T.A.L. wouldn't be content with containing horrible atrocities like vaginal depth scores and ugly gay goblins that like it in the ass, it would still be a game burdened by an excess of useless (and objectifying) rules and regulations. Roleplaying games only work when they don't have the gall to tell you what they're about. DnD permits you such freedom, and lets DMs and players tweak and change things at their leisure. I mean, look at the massive amounts of fan-made content out there. Isn't the abundance of such material proof that DnD works and is easily related to?

[Eos]

Roleplaying games only work when they don't have the gall to tell you what they're about. DnD permits you such freedom, and lets DMs and players tweak and change things at their leisure. I mean, look at the massive amounts of fan-made content out there. Isn't the abundance of such material proof that DnD works and is easily related to?

Yes, and obviously the DMs and players are responsible for a huge amount of the tone and subject matter of their games, but every game has a theme and a subject matter, otherwise everything would be a generic toolbox like GURPS or one of those millions of free systems available online.