Recent content by Ed Greenwood

Henry, you raise a very good point. You're right, of course. And yet...and yet...I wish it weren't so. I wish some things could last forever. I MISS those golden gone days!

I first heard that question voiced aloud when I was very young, in the schoolyard, by a girl speaking to other girls (if any of them had known I, a boy of the decidedly “uncool” bookish nerdy sort, was within earshot, the question would not have been asked). At the time, I sniggered. Not at the...

Over the years and many, many conventions, I’ve met a lot of lonely gamers. Folks who don’t live within easy reach of a gaming group that can assemble to battle dragons or the legions of evil or evil undying lich-kings every weekend, or as often as they’d like. If they’re lucky, they can scare...

It all started with taxes. Legally avoiding them, that is. The sort called “Customs duties,” to be precise. Back in those dear gone days, Canada (I’m Canadian, born and lifelong resident) let returning citizens legally import goods worth a paltry pittance (little more than a tank of gas in...

Many early game play forays into the Forgotten Realms were library “mini-campaigns.” That is, free programs provided to the public at the public libraries I worked at (first at the Don Mills regional branch, and later at the smaller Brookbanks community branch). Aimed at young adults, though I...

The burgher himself unlocked her shackles, making a grand show of producing the right key from the thick ring at his belt. The oldest, most ornate, and most worn of the bunch. He gave it to two of the younger men and waved at them to free the prisoner, taking himself well back and away to watch...

These days, when running the Realms outside of a tournament, playtest, or one-shot convention situation, I wing it. By now, I know the world through and through (or at least my version of it), and the players are driving the story with what they want their players to accomplish. However...

Writers sometimes plan things, when spinning fiction. And sometimes those plans even work out more or less as intended, but that’s another topic, for another day. Just now, let us consider merely the ways of planning—and they are many. One of those many ways is to ask, again and again as the...

Whether we’re talking about real-world politics or playing in an ongoing fantasy roleplaying campaign that uses an established shared setting (like the Realms or Golarion or Krynn), there are ways of “playing nice,” and there’s also behaviour that’s not considered nice. Breaking the rules, some...