@avclub-4f087c37058a145e5d78eb26a6ff7985:disqus Nah, you just start again - the whole process is pretty fast. Usually you'd roll five or six characters and choose the one you like the most. I've heard other people just ignored the "death" result, and instead just gave the PC some sort of disability.
 Just like…

I think Ars Magica always has a GM - it's just that they suggested switching the role around frequently if you used the troup style. Unless you're talking about something else I don't remember or never got to read.
 Aria didn't have GMs, IIRC, and that's quite old; but other than that, all the ones I can think of are…

Hero Quest / Hero Wars is by far my favorite at the moment. Elegant rules, beautifully simple system, and you can run anything with it. I tend to prefer the original version, but the new one is quite good as well. It definitely focuses on story and not rules, though.

In old-school Traveler, you created a character by rolling basic stats, and then rolling on different tables which would describe your character's life in… four year chunks?
 IIRC, each chunk would represent a tour of duty in one of a number of organizations. Each tour would randomly give you different skills and…

The monster manuals are the best part of D&D, and absolute catnip to kids. That is, if kids went crazy for catnip.
 My four and a half year old son can't get enough of them, especially since he discovered that some of them have dinosaurs…

Yeah. Got to see John Carter this weekend, and loved it. Such a shame.

Did I miss it, or has no one quoted The Gamers yet? What kind of role-playing discussion is this?

Exalted - what a great game.
 4th ed D&D actively discourages people from playing evil characters, which strikes me as an odd design decision. I'm kind of disappointed, with all the other bold changes they made, that they didn't actually get rid of alignments altogether… though I guess it fits into how prescriptive it…

I have it under authority that science can blind you.
 You know what else can blind you? Masturbation.

Agreed, I really enjoyed this piece.

Neverwinter Nights are some weird games. The main games are extremely meh, but the expansions were great. Plus some really good user-generated modules.

Ah, Traveller. Got to love a game where you can die during character creation…

It doesn't really work like that - the computing of numbers is usually only an issue at character creation (and even then, it's not really number crunching, but juggling a large number of concepts and different options). Combat can be a problem in the beginning, but once you familiarize yourself with the system, it's…

Planescape Torment. Probably my favorite game .
 Not for the system, though - that would be the Icewind Dale series.

Uncharted 3: the review that keeps on giving.

Seriously doubt it - none of their previous games ever hit any other system than the PSP.

"Stellated Dodecahedron Head is really a representation of the predators' hopelessly convoluted mythology"

Dead Space sacrificed horror for slick gameplay, though. I like it well enough, but the only scary bit in both games were the first five minutes of the first one, and running into the raptor-things.

Oh, I loved the whole Qunari storyline, at least up to the last few scenes; Best thing in the game by far, and it helped me overlook the dodgier aspects of the game. As soon as it was resolved, though…

The criticism that the novel isn't really horrific is fair in that it's a sequel to his only horror novel, but most of the author's book never really try to be horror - I suspect that taking it as a weird fantasy novel, like most of his other stuff, would help.
 I am so getting this today…