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While we're all very glad that WotC stepped down from their threat to allegedly "de authorize" the OGL 1.0a (if it could even legally be done) and instead dumped the 5.1 SRD into Creative Commons, I've had some thoughts about this going through my head for a while. When it looked like we might...

While the fight over OGL 1.0a goes on, there is also the fact that it seems WotC will be releasing a lot of the generic "nuts and bolts" of the 5e system via a Creative Commons, albeit leaving out all the setting-specific elements for a fantasy RPG. Whatever their hostile intents towards the...

With some money I got for Christmas, I decided I would expand my collection of miniatures for D&D games. I realized I never used giants in my D&D games, because I had no minis for them. So, I hunted around online at various mini stores and ordered some official hill giant, stone giant, frost...

A thought about the D&D multiverse and elves. In Spelljammer, one of the setting elements is the Elven Imperial Fleet, a vast and powerful fleet of ships that patrols known space. However, there is no Elven Empire, no known Elven homeworld, the Imperial Fleet nominally answers to the royalty...

When the Warlock class first debuted in D&D, it was in the Complete Arcane supplement for D&D 3.5, in November 2004. It wasn't OGC, and quite honestly was rather awkward and kludging, trying to create an arcane caster class that couldn't cast spells and instead just got nothing but spell-like...

I've played Dungeons and Dragons Online, the D&D MMORPG (based mostly on the 3.5e rules, set mostly in Eberron but also with expansions into Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Greyhawk) for years off-and-on. It's interesting to see some of the expansions and adaptations they've made to the rules...

Twenty years ago this month, the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, 3rd Edition, was released. I thought this might be a good time to remember the release of 3e and talk about the release and the changes it brought to gaming. The release was the focus of this website when it was...

Metaplots, that game setting design convention of the setting timeline moving forward and the setting changing over time in future books. It was quite the rage in game design in the 1990's, but seems to be a little less popular now. We've seen a pretty broad spectrum of how games act with...

Okay, as I'm trying to learn 5e, and coming from a 2e and 3e heritage, I'm seeing a HUGE gap as I read through the Player's Handbook. Are there no skills/proficiencies at all for a character to know a profession? There is the short list of very broad skills for characters, and craft skills...

Okay, I'm a D&D 3.5 grognard. I love my 3e. I didn't go to 4e because, well. . .edition wars and all that. I stopped paying attention to new anything from WotC when 4e came out. Between 4e, the Spellplague, and discontinuing d20 Modern (and later discontinuing the Star Wars RPG) there was...

I'm fortunate enough to have a job, in this era of pandemic, that lets me work from home. I'm in the roughly 1/3 of the workforce that is now doing so. It's a white-collar office job in a State Government bureaucracy. For years I'd said our job could be done by telecommuting, that there was...

We've all got a favorite edition. We've all got editions that aren't our favorites. However, from the editions that weren't my favorite, I can still point out things that I liked from those editions. Concepts, styles, ways books were written. . .something. . .in each edition that were good...

I've returned to playing the MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online the last couple of months. It's mostly set in Eberron (with some high-level adventures in Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft, via planar travel). Yesterday, I saw at least a passing nod to Spelljammer though. In the game, guilds can...

Official D&D settings have, pretty consistently since first edition, the same set of monstrous and demihuman deities. They even have some of the same evil deities. Flipping through the Monster Manual shows a lot of lore around the various monstrous or demihuman deities mentioned. . .Grummsh...

D&D 3.x gave us a wonderful proliferation of character classes for the game. Mostly prestige classes, but definitely a good number of new base classes. Only one of the classes introduced became core in the later editions, the Warlock, originally from Complete Arcane. I always thought that was...

I think my dentist is ripping me off. Let me give some explanation. I went roughly 20 years with almost no dental care. An incompetent small-town dentist back in Stanford that did a filling on me without proper anesthetic left me deeply dreading dentists. I couldn't afford a dentist most of...

Hello everyone, I figured I'd ask here on the chance that someone might have some information. At the Church I attend, there's a small coat of arms in the corner of a huge stained glass window. Somehow, someway, nobody had noticed it before me. Well, nobody there. The two priests at that...

Something I've been thinking about regarding magic items in AD&D. I sometimes wonder if the groups I played with were "doing it wrong". . .because while I had a pretty consistent experience between all the various groups I played with. . .I sometimes see people talk about AD&D with a totally...

Years ago (circa Spring 2001), I was part of a large, vibrant gaming club in college. We had a huge gaming library, spread across a filing cabinet, the drawers of a desk, and a several wall lockers, in the student organizations center of our college. It was a pretty nice library, with every...

I'm a gamer who doesn't get to game much anymore. It's been more years than I'd like since I've been able to game with any regularity, thanks to a variety of personal and professional happenings keeping me busy. I still hope to get back to regular gaming "one of these days". (Cynically, I...