Recent content by Ralif Redhammer

The domain game that AD&D was supposed to transition to at higher levels would provide plenty of opportunities for PCs to spend their GP. Rulership is expensive. I've increasingly come to feel that removing this element of late-stage gameplay from D&D was a mistake. Agreed. You should not be...

The amount of detail on the that cover is phenomenal. The way the light from the dragon's eyes catches on, well, everything. Robin Wood did some amazing work for TSR. Trying to square that in your world-building seems like it would be way too much work. And it completely breaks down if you have...

Hmmm... Margaret St. Clair's The Shadow People was hugely influential on the Underdark, as is Merritt's The Moon Pool. Lumley's Burrowers Beneath is cited as the source of the Mind Flayer. Though, on that subject, I might also point to the short story Forringer's Fortune. Originally published in...

One of the many lessons on why executives should've make creative decisions. That's a great story! Those mini-vehicles were great - they presented a cheap on-ramp when most of the full-size toys retailed for $10-25.

Hmmm, Vance's Dying Earth would've been my second pick. For third place, it'd probably have to be Lord of the Rings. Without it, you don't have halflings or orcs, for example, and the depictions of elves would be very different. Not to mention the Cloak of Elvenkind, the Ring of Invisibility...

The concept of the Cavalier is one that's been a part of fantasy literature for ages. Most of us grew up hearing tales of the Knights of the Round Table. But especially at the time the 1e Cavalier was introduced, it was somewhat at odds with the style of play of AD&D.

Heavy stuff for ostensibly a kids' show. Optimus Prime's death, along with a bunch of other Transformers (including Brawn, the first Transformers toy I ever had), was a heck of a tone switch from the cartoon, that's for sure.

Originally my 1e campaign (after it had graduated from "generic fantasy world with dungeons" took place in Waterdeep. That same campaign kept going until 2e, when the group decided that they wanted to pick up and move to Shadowdale. Going from such a dense locale to Shadowdale, I was at first...

When you've got spells flying around, characters with 100HP, and all these weird monsters, I think by nature the violence becomes somewhat absurd and cartoonish. Vampire, on the other hand, while it can devolve into "vampire action heroes," at its best it should give violence weight and...

None of the cavaliers I saw in long-term play made it very long. Even if they didn't get themselves permanently killed sticking to their code, I think a lot of players also got tired of being a shining knight on horseback continually ending up in dungeons. We likewise went with method I back...

It's been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. Like LOTR, it's a book I keep returning to as the decades pass. Sticks is good. KEW has a talent for building dread slowly but surely, infusing small things with fear at first. Three Hearts and Three Lions is what I consider the most concentrated...

Since switching from D&D to Cyberpunk Red, I've found how I describe the violence in the game has changed. I find myself less comfortable describing gun violence. Certainly, critical injuries require a certain degree of narrative gore, but for your average attacks I find myself more likely to...

I've read his Kane stories, but have slept on his horror works until now.

The Satanic Panic probably nixed the Witch, if it had at all been planned as an eventual class. I think the earliest official book release of it was in 1990's Complete Wizard's Handbook. I suspect a lot of tables ignored the behavioral requirements of those classes. Which would net you some...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law