Interesting Links for 06-06-2013

[andrewducker]

• The inadvertent child pornographer
  (tags: law uk photographs children nudity )
• Personality is the result of nurture, not nature (in birds)
  (tags: personality birds )
• Why Does the American Media Get Big Stories Wrong?
  (tags: media )
• Google Reader alternatives
  (tags: google googlereader rss )
• 10 things you might not know about India
  (tags: india )

Comments

[philmophlegm]

The AD&D flowchart is a work of beauty.

[andrewducker]

I haven't actually seen it yet - I read the article on my phone, and tagged it from there, and I'm looking forward to taking a look later!

[spacelem]

The way AD&D is meant to be played is to throw away the AD&D rulebook, and play Original D&D. Which, I note, you have as your userpic. I heartily approve!

Seriously, it's better. AD&D was only meant for tournament play, and tries to force everything so that things would be the same from table to table. The motto of AD&D is anything not permitted is forbidden, whereas the motto for OD&D is anything not forbidden is permitted.

Also, there's this wonderful line at the bottom of page 8 of Men & Magic:
Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign
referee.In other words, even though there was very little written in the book, you were supposed to just make it up as you went along, do whatever felt right, and what you enjoyed doing. Totally against the

[philmophlegm]

Absolutely.

Most of my role-playing is my own version of the Traveller rules. The basic principle of this is 'Roll 2d6 and try to beat the number that I just arbitrarily made up'.

Having said that, you should see my 22mb Excel spreadsheet interstellar trading system...

[khbrown]

Without the arbirary aspect that sounds like Mongoose Traveller, with its recognition that some tasks are trivial for someone with a given level of skill. Going low berth is less of a risk than it used to be.

[philmophlegm]

Yeah, I like MongT as a system. I actually use the MongT character generation because I like the background events stuff.

Traveller 5 is the exact opposite. The rulebook is 656 pages, with rules for everything. (One of the rules examples uses my name because I was a major kickstarter backer of the project.) It's nice to have, and I may cherry pick the best bits, but I doubt I'll ever run a by-the-book T5 campaign.

There's a lot to say for little black books.