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But too often the rules could get in the way of a good time - witness all the tropes about rules lawyers. By simplifying the rules, they shifted emphasis back to the storytelling, instead of the minutiae of the rules.

I was 100% against 5e as yet another money grab after 4e, and ignored it for a few years. Finally played one evening when I was visiting some old friends, and was instantly sold because of this.

It helped I had people who I knew well and who knew me well and I could ask, "what's the basic stuff I need to know?" They told me, tossed me a character, and I just ran with it. Didn't read the PHB, didn't worry about the rules because it was the D&D I knew and loved, just with most of the bookkeeping removed.

"I want to jump off the roof and motherfucking assassin's creed that guy in the back."
"That's going to be a really high difficulty bit of acrobatics."
"Sure, but don't I have advantage since I have the high ground and the element of surprise?"
"DC 21. Go for it."

And we're done. Roll two dice, take the bigger number, add one number, and we have the answer. Previously it would be rolling a die, adding a skill, figuring out if a height bonus applied, a stealth bonus, a size bonus, what if I have bless, but he's got a displacer cloak so it's -6 and....shit I'm a drow and I get a -2 to everything in daylight....

Now if there's at least one advantage and one disadvantage, they all cancel out, so once you find one of each, you're done. No reason to keep doing bookkeeping, just role the damn die and get on with life.

I can't believe how many hours we used to sit around doing bookkeeping to play this game. Outside of the actual game we'd be going through everything to try to figure out how to maximize our math, reading up on what stacks with what, and what doesn't stack. Coming up with tricks to mess up the enemy's math tricks.

Now it's so much more about the story, and we never worry about "can I do that within the bounds of the rules?" A good DM and the answer is almost always yes. Pick an appropriate skill, figure out if there's advantage or disadvantage, handwave a DC, and lets do it!

I found this one on a trip down memory lane. Runs in a DOSBox and works great on my Win7 laptop! Yes, it's ENTIRELY LEGAL. you can get the download here.

Wow, you really WANT a fresh bitchslapping, don't you? Challenge accepted!

Lets see...you have Electronic Arts using DRM, we have Ubisoft still requiring online activation if not always on, and of course the current Linux darling Valve which is you'll stop slurping the GNUoolaid from RMS then you'd know that Steam is THE BIGGEST DRM SYSTEM ON THE PLANET DUMBASS that makes its own secure executable which is LOCKED TO A PLAYER...hmm...locked to a player so nobody can share that, what is it? Sounds familiar, could it be...DRM? Dum dum DUMBASS.

But of course all YOU can do is scream NIGGER which in FOSSie language is called PaidMicrosoftShill, but hey, if your kind didn't act like religious zealots then we couldn't enjoy laughing at you, which we do Alex, we ALL laugh at you, at how you can't even see reality when it is cockslapping you in the face, how no matter how broken a mess the devs hand you you say "Oh please good sir, may I have another?" that's what makes it so damned funny!

If I could mod this up any farther I would. How, on Slashdot of all places, this point isn't made in the first five comments (after the obligatory sarcastic first comment) is absolutely beyond me.

The concept of owning the game as a component of it's purchased value is the single major argument against this type of blatant money grabbing. Recently, Tycho recently made a point on Penny-Arcade that no one seems to complain about Steam having this exact same business model. And that in fact, digital distribution has an even more unforgiving consumer contract. You cannot resell digital copies AT ALL, even handicapped versions of them. Where's all the internet vitriol for Steam?

I believe the answer to that lies in the comment above. You can get good games on Steam at MUCH reduced prices. Sure, if I want Skyrim on release day, it will be $59.99. But six months later? We can likely pick it up, un-handicapped, for likely half the cost. A lot of these price reductions are done according to demand (shocking I know), so maybe Skyrim wasn't the best example. But still: try going into Walmart a year after an A1 title is released and see how much the price as come down.

And lastly, Origin is like some horrific mutant child of the worst of both models. Want to buy the vanilla Sims 3 on Origin four years after launch? Congratulations! It's been reduced to only $30! This makes me wonder, how much of this is ALL game companies, and how much of this is just EA?

Pending any world-wide figures, it'll have to do. I don't think there's much reason to assume PC vs console breakdown in the UK is much different to anywhere else.

In terms of digital distribution, I'd presume this is a relatively small proportion, as it's substantially more expensive in the UK (don't ask, I don't know):

Amazon UK - £8.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Crysis-PC-DVD/dp/B002BWONOY/
EA Origin UK - £14.99: http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/pd/productID.225985400/sac.true

(this continues with other releases, for example SWTOR is £37.70 boxed http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-DVD/dp/B005DD6R6A/ or £44.99 to download http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SWTOR_EN/ )

Pending any world-wide figures, it'll have to do. I don't think there's much reason to assume PC vs console breakdown in the UK is much different to anywhere else.

In terms of digital distribution, I'd presume this is a relatively small proportion, as it's substantially more expensive in the UK (don't ask, I don't know):

Amazon UK - £8.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Crysis-PC-DVD/dp/B002BWONOY/
EA Origin UK - £14.99: http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/pd/productID.225985400/sac.true

(this continues with other releases, for example SWTOR is £37.70 boxed http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-DVD/dp/B005DD6R6A/ or £44.99 to download http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SWTOR_EN/ )

They learned that lesson as well.