Recent content by occam

How's the adventure in the Starter Set? I don't feel a need for the physical set, but might very well buy it digitally for the adventure.

I'll third the recommendation for Kingdom (link provided because it can be hard to search for such a generic title), which is fantastic if you want to see medieval Korea on the screen and also enjoy zombie horror. I really wish it were still going. (For modern-day Korean zombie fun, there is, of...

And OA6, Ronin Challenge, which starts in Shou Lung and then goes into the mountains of southwestern Kara-Tur. And the Empires Adventure Trilogy (FRA1/2/3), of course, which contains major events set in Ra-Khati and Khazari in the mountains west of Shou Lung, and Kuo Meilan, the ancient capital...

Thanks for the legwork! The lack of any contact with the house's history on the part of the new commercial buyers concerns me a bit, though. Given the survival of so many of the places from TSR's days in Lake Geneva (the hotel, the Horiticultural Hall, the Gygax home, this house, etc.), it'd be...

Following Yamun's death, his son Hubadai established Yaïmmunahar in the "Hordelands", as described in Dragon #349. If it's still around, the nation would be almost 140 years old now.

See Van Richten's Guide for a 5e version of the jiangshi (hopping vampire).

In D&D terms, that is what the wu jen was. In the Kara-Tur boxed set, it even notes that they're called fang-hsiang shih ("master of recipes") in Shou Lung. It's possible that Zeb Cook wasn't familiar with the term when Oriental Adventures was published, or he might've used that instead of...

I happened to take a drive through Lake Geneva as well, in May. I was struck by how small the "downtown" area is: the 1970s Gygax house (and 2nd HQ after Don Kaye's home), the DHSM/3rd HQ (I think referred to as the Old Gray House?), the Horticultural Hall, the Hotel Clair (4th HQ) are all in...

Monster version of the 2014 gloom stalker ranger's Umbral Sight. (y)

That depends. It isn't cheap when you're storing gobs of biological image data (as my current employer does). Granted, adventure maps are on a different scale.

There are free maps that come with the Maps VTT -- 9 at current count, plus 9 animated versions. I imagine those will stick around. Pretty basic, but broadly useful. Then there are the free adventures on DDB that also come with maps, like Intro to Stormwreck Isle. So even if you never bought a...

They were acquired, or at least semi-acquired, via some sort of deal by Quimbley's Toys and Games late last year (2024). But... now the Quimbley's website seems to have gone dark? Does anyone know what happened to their intention to fulfill past Petersen Games Kickstarters? I assume it didn't go...

My first character for each new edition was a half-elf ranger named Eldarion (Aragorn's son) for the same reason: 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e; I broke the trend with 5e. Which gives away part of my story: I love Middle-earth. I also love Moorcock, Donaldson, Leiber, Zelazny, etc.; I was getting into all of...

It couldn't. Put simplistically, the Tolkien elements in D&D didn't make it feel like swords-and-sorcery, and the pulp elements made it feel very different from Middle-earth. Nothing crammed all that stuff (plus other elements of world mythology and folklore) into one place before like D&D did...

To provide context, that's not a uniform treatment. For example, the main 5e rulebook just shows Gandalf on Shadowfax (presumably), with no hint of an imminent threat; while the TOR cover shows a group of PCs preparing for combat. None of the other covers, for 5e or TOR, are particularly...