Recent content by afreed

So far as I can recall, Dragon was my first exposure to RPGs, and it helped maintain my interest in the hobby for long periods when I wasn't actively playing. That said... this was in the late 1980s, before Internet access was common. I can't imagine that if I were 8 years old today, I'd...

This isn't correct. You're right that Charlie Stross is the creator of the gith races and the slaadi, but they didn't originate in his fiction and they weren't "fliched" by TSR or WotC. They were submitted by Stross for publication in the Fiend Folio. Nothing unethical or unusual about...

I'm aiming to get the manuscript edited by the end of the week. (I just got back from vacation, and I have some other items on my plate, so it took a little time for Black Wind to get my full attention.) I'm not sure what the status of the artwork and cartography is. Jeffrey Visgaitis will...

Pff! So how come you couldn't remember the rules? (Actually, I found your original draft of the scion, and we're both right: you wrote it, but I added the blood mist in revisions.) Uh, guess we sort of derailed the thread, here...

Scion It's been ages since I worked on Legends, and I don't even remember who wrote the scion (though the fog looks like something I'd do), but I believe the "magical beast" thing was intentional. Krug is an animalistic god, and drinking his blood is going to "de-evolve" you. If you want the...

It should be emphasized here that DitV isn't actually about Mormons in the American West, any more than, say, D&D is actually about medieval Europe. (Okay, that's overstating the case, but you get my meaning.) The setting is fairly loosely defined, so you can make it as ahistorical or realistic...

I'm going to quote S. John Ross from the rpg.net forums. Don't know if I agree with him, but he has an interesting point: "I get a lot of heat at conventions for saying this, but I consider [Tunnels & Trolls] the very first RPG ever published. White-box D&D regarded name and gender as optional...

Yes! Yes, I have done this. Only monsters my PC dealt the final blow to counted, but nonlethal KOs were okay. I think I was inspired by the computer game Nethack. I know no one's interested, but here's Dame Whitford's Monster Kill List, from the Sunless Citadel: Dire Rats: 11 Skeletons: 2...

I realize that licensing issues are the real reason there's no Narnia RPG, but I'm not sure if the setting would work for a game, anyway. I love the books, but here's the way I see it: Fantasy RPGs come from a Tolkienesque tradition, not in terms of setting or theme, but in terms of...

You might want to take a gander at The Inner Circle's Violet Dawn campaign setting. There are parts where things are "in motion," but you can easily downplay the armies in favor of lonely wilderness and sad, forgotten ruins. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of setting material beyond the...

I wrote Scent skill rules for Denizens of Avadnu. Fairly basic, works very similarly to Spot and Listen. I'd recommend making it a ranger class skill and either giving it as a class skill to all half-orcs or giving half-orcs a +2 bonus to checks. The scent special quality grants a +10 bonus and...

If I can shamelessly plug a commercial product... I'm very fond of Lhorighast, a half-fiend ooze human monk 12 / blackguard 2 I created for Fantasy Personae: Sages, Spies, and Informants (which Joe Kushner just reviewed). From Lhorighast's background: The underworld is the ultimate...

I hate to plug my own material so early in a thread, but darn it, it applies.... Digital Denizens: Challenge Rating 1 and Digital Denizens: Challenge Rating 2 are both available for $3 each at rpgnow.com, reprinting the monsters from Denizens of Avadnu in PDF format. You might find 'em useful...

Balor's actually real (linguistically speaking); nasty being from Celtic mythology. Here's a Wikipedia link for the details. (And yes, that is a great article!)

I think it's a nice idea in principle, but ultimately flawed for several reasons: 1) It's a tacit endorsement of the piracy mindset. Now, I empathize with some of what pirates say--but by setting up this system, you're not just risking your money; you're helping pirates justify what they do...