The famous term 'fantasy heartbreaker' was coined by Ron Edwards and refers to the massive number of D&D-like RPGs on the market which: People have poured their hearts into Aren't very good Have some great ideas Fail to really get away from D&D I see the problem, and therefore solution, very differently. …

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Classic RPG adventures suffer from chronic flaws. When PCs should to go somewhere, they don't. When they should take interest in an item, they ignore it. Any NPC who will lead them to a secret cave in Chapter IV gets stabbed in Chapter II because the players thought he was up to something. After all the carnage, they …

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RuneQuest's Glorantha setting is 500 pages long, so it's about half the length of Lord of the Rings. In order to help with character creation, players can get a 'Player pack' pdf, which tells you that the book as written was too confusing for normal players to build a character. The character creation begins with your …

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Trouble at Grogs is one of the best adventures I ever ran, and I've run it many times, in multiple systems. It looks like any other adventure at first. The players find a roaring tavern owned by a half-ogre named 'Grog'. Grog asks them to find out who's been stealing things in town. Reading more, you (the GM) find out …

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I so often hear people giving the golden rule of RPG's as 'remember it's a game, and to just have fun'. I can see that if nobody likes the game then it's not a good game, but the 'have fun' advice, while common enough, doesn't help anyone to do anything. John Mill discussed the paradox of happiness. If you want to …

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Systems should represent genres, and some do this better than others. System Excellence Dr Who One Dr Who RPG (I forget which) contained an absolutely genius initiative system. The initiative turn-order was: Speak Run Use an item Attack This clearly produces unrealistic results. The system cannot allow anyone to shoot …

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