Tragedy + Time = Comedy and/or Apathy

Just tell them it's a "retro" or "vintage" email address - you'll be the envy of all the hipsters.

The "guide to life" thing is particularly bizarre since Rick, while funny in an assholish sort of way, is a totally irresponsible sociopath who's caused literally billions of deaths of humans and other sentients.

Well I'm a hypocrite anyway I guess because I still read Wikipedia, but I do get annoyed at the general shoddiness of it all.

Wikipedia: worth every penny you pay for it.

Patagonia claims to have started thinking about that stuff. They might be the only ones.

Yes, the story style is very hard to pull off. There is just so much prep work, and it takes a storytelling skill which frankly few people have. The "explore from a base" approach is sort of a happy medium between random hack-and-slash and grand saga.

Had to think about that one for a second.

"It also recently opened up a handful of bookstores that similarly remove the pesky “human” element, stocking a limited selection of titles based on the site’s popularity algorithm."

I had a paladin character once who found a magic shield which played "Ride of the Valkyries" whenever its user went into combat. It wasn't exactly cursed, but it made stealth attacks pretty much out of the question. It was so cool we didn't really care.

I posted a comment replying to someone else in which I mentioned that it's possible that Gygax and company wanted the classes and alignments in 1E to be like secret societies (Freemasons, Illuminati, etc) which would have levels of access, initiations, secret agendas, etc, and the alignment language would be a signal…

When I played 1E and 2E AD&D years ago, a lot of DMs didn't really run real campaigns, they would just use whatever TSR-printed modules they happened to own (Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, etc). The players were anybody they could convince to play, with any level-appropriate characters they already had.

I have only played Basic D&D, 1E AD&D, and 2E AD&D, so I am not really sure how this plays out in 4E or other versions, but the earlier versions always had big problems with class balance.

I think these things go in cycles. The min-max, number-crunching, hack-and-slash, maps and miniatures tactical style of play was always there right from the beginning. Original recipe 1970's Dungeons & Dragons emerged from a house rules variant of the Chainmail medieval war game. I don't think the original…

In 1E AD&D there were a lot of obscure rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide which most DMs never even knew about, let alone used, but if used together they might have actually formed a balanced, cohesive whole.

I think some of the stranger ideas in First Edition AD&D, especially alignment languages, thieves' cant, level titles, and the (in my experience) never-used official rule that you had to pay large sums of money for skill training in order to level up, were all part of a milieu in which the alignments and classes…

Most people I played with back in the day would roll 5d6, throw out the two lowest numbers, then total up the highest three. Write down that number, then do it five more times. Then slot those six figures into the six ability scores. Obviously this gave pretty impressive scores. Everybody had at least one 18, and…

Between the Edition Wars and the d20 System and the Open Gaming License, there's a ridiculous amount of material available, and it's hard to even say which of it is really "D&D" anymore. Obviously the only solution is to cherry-pick a few things one really likes, then customize to taste.

I can't remember any more what was official and what was house rules, but lots of DMs gave experience for magic items recovered and treasure looted, so that sped things up a lot.

Ars Technica had a big article on that Dune game last month. Apparently it's considered a lost classic, and if you still have one in good condition it's definitely worth something.