That would have interesting implications for the differing pantheons of gods.

mikemearls24 points19 days ago
I started doing this stuff in 1999, so I’m pegging everything before that:

GURPS 2nd edition – Platonic ideal of a universal engine IMO. Just enough detail to get you playing without overwhelming you with rules.

Call of Cthulhu 4th edition – Cthulhu I started with.

Ars Magica 2nd edition – liked the approach to magic, first game I encountered that really integrated setting and rules

Broken Covenant of Calebais for ArM – had a lot of fun with this, dungeoncrawl built by Jonathan Tweet that tried to not be a dungeon

Shadowrun 1st edition – my elf can have a gun and nobody thinks that’s cheating. Sign me up.

Early White Wolf magazine – before the Internet, was the best gateway to RPGs beyond D&D

Unknown Armies 1st edition (squeezes under the deadline) – kind of felt like modern day Ars Magica to me, setting and system really work well, hard to not come up with great campaign ideas reading it

Vampire 1st ed – clans were great, added a distinct flavor to the vampire myth and made it easy to figure out why the characters were actors in the world

Mage 1st ed – there’s nothing more fun than figuring out the convoluted series of coincidences that end with a Terminator-like assassin ending up getting sucked into the engine of a low-flying 747

Do you think that the assumption of six to eight encounters per day that the book makes is being played that way in our tables? If not, how would it change the design of the game going forward?

mikemearls50 points19 days ago
No, that was a rough approximation. I think I’d tackle it by giving DMs who want to focus on combat some more robust rules for building series of encounters and tying rests into victories.

For instance, rather than take a short rest you win a minor triumph (and get the benefits of a short rest) once you have defeated X monsters in a day.