In 1978 at age 12, I bought my second roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha (MA) by Jim Ward. That’s the day I became a fan of the Open Gaming License and the d20 logo. Or at least I would have been a fan if someone had gone back in time and told me about them. The rules in MA described a different reality from those of Dungeons & Dragons, and I was disappointed. I already knew how many Hit Dice wolves, humans, and other creatures had; how combat worked; how experience and levels worked; and more. MA ignored all that and presented a different system. If it had been an improved version, I would have been OK with it, but it was just a different way of doing things, and it didn’t even have an experience system. I felt as though TSR had betrayed my trust. Even so, we played a lot of MA, at least until Gamma World released and we bought that game. It came in a box and a had a map of a war-devastated North America, so we were sold. In 1979, I switched largely to RuneQuest from Chaosium. It had a single dice-rolling mechanic that it used for everything: magic, skills, and combat. The system was designed from the ground up to be rational. Within a few years, the publisher used variants of the same system for their other roleplaying games, notably Call of Cthulhu. It made sense to me that if a publisher’s RPG rules were good then they’d want to use those rules for all their RPGs. Meanwhile, GURPS from Steve Jackson Games showed how much mileage a publisher can get out of a single RPG system. After I started doing professional game designer, Mark Rein•Hagen and I dreamed up simple, universal dice-pool system that we thought could apply to any setting. He ended up developing some of those ideas into the core mechanic for Vampire: The Masquerade, which then served several other RPGs. I derived a different dice-pool system and used mine for Over the Edge (Atlas Games, 1992). My interest in universal systems rose again in 1997, when Wizards of the Coast purchased...

Unearthed Arcana makes an unexpected return (the last one was back in May) with a three-page PDF containing two subclasses -- Path of the Wild Soul for the barbarian, and Way of the Astral Self for the monk.

About six weeks ago, I mentioned an upcoming 5E-powered video game called Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Developers Tactical Adventures have been in touch, so I asked them a few quick questions about the upcoming game, wich will be coming to Kickstarter soon. What can you tell us about the world in which this game takes place? We will be giving more information on the world fairly soon (we plan to introduce our lore during our Kickstarter). We cannot reveal too much, as we want discovering the world of Solasta to be part of the final experience. That being said, Solasta is a High Fantasy universe where players will find most of their favorite playable races, with one notable caveat: they may behave / interact differently than you think, as an ancient cataclysm forged Solasta to its current state. You might also be interested to know that one of writer is Graeme Davis, one of the original author of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in 1986 - and that he won the Best Writing ENnies at Gen Con this year! You mention some character types such as a Darkweaver Rogue and a Mountaineer Fighter. Which 5E classes and races can we expect to see in the game? We would like to include the races and classes found in the System Reference Document of the OGL – though we may not be able to include all of them for our first game. Note however that the SRD only details one subrace per race and one archetype per class, so we will be adding more of those according to our own lore - hence the Darkweaver & Mountaineer. currently we have 4 races / Classes available on our Website: Human / Dwarf / Elf / Halfling, and Fighter / Cleric / Wizard / Rogue. More will be added through Kickstarter. How much of the 5E ruleset made it into the game, and how much did you need to change for the new medium? I actually wrote an article about that particular topic. Long story short I would say that we want to include as much as possible of the ruleset. Some successful games included 70%-80%...

On WotC's 'Spoilers & Swag' Twitch stream, the map of Avernus was previewed along with some other images. Map of Avernus An unreliable map you get given at the beginning of the game by a cartographer who has lost his mind The (Bleeding?) Citadel surrounded by "the Scab" The Palisade Probably a warlord hideout along the River Styx Candlekeep Zariel A gigantic demon

Begin at the beginning, saith the maxim. So here we go… Yes, I’m the guy who created The Forgotten Realms. Back in the spring of 1965. You read that right: 1965, about a decade before D&D, which came along in 1974, and wasn’t seen by most of the world (all the places that weren’t colleges in or near Wisconsin) until 1975. I was five years old. A few months away from being six. I was one of those kids they called “child prodigies,” and devoured all the books in my parents’ den. Like many book collectors, my Dad built his own bookshelves so he could cram the maximum amount of books onto them and out of the maze of boxes that filled the basement, so books ended up sorted by size, which meant an inquisitive young reader could stumble across anything. And I did. Everything from wartime National Geographics to “give one to a friend in uniform” wartime paperback murder mysteries and lurid pulps to fantasy and science fiction. Lots and lots of fantasy and science fiction. Note from Morrus -- I'm super happy to announce Ed Greenwood's new column here on EN World! Upcoming articles include Mirt Strides Out Of My Mind, and Making A Setting Come To Life! Please let us know in the comments about topics you'd like to hear, and don't forget to check out Jonathan Tweet's new column and, of course, Jim Ward's excellent column which delves into TSR's history! Many was the occasion upon which I’d go racing up the stairs waving a discovery I’d fallen in love with but just finished, calling, “Dad! Dad, where’s the next one? There IS a sequel, isn’t there?” And my father, who knew books and writers and the world of magazines like few mortals I’ve ever met (and I’ve worked for forty-five years in public libraries), would either direct me to where it could be found, or far more often would say something along the lines of, “Son, that writer died in 1938, and never wrote a sequel to that one, so far as I know, so if you want to read one, you’ll have to write it.” And I’d...