Recent content by Ralif Redhammer

When my family went to Italy when I was a little kid, I was very scared of getting in a gondola. Probably because I didn't know how to swim yet. I haven't done much of anything with the Gumshoe system, but that looks pretty neat!

Late-Middle Ages / Renaissance-era Venice is filled with so much to inspire a person. My first 5e campaign was set in a fantasy version of Venice.

In smaller groups, I think there's some benefit to having a bigger toolkit, but in most parties, you're going to be surrounded by people that do what you do, only better. I think a big part of the gish class' persistence is rooted in D&D's squishy wizards design. People are always looking for a...

And don't forget that Half-Orcs apparently had no souls, and were dead dead, unable to be brought back to life. Back in the day I don't think anyone in my group playing one, but as I've grown up, I've come to appreciate AD&D Half-Orcs more and more. Multiclassing has always sacrificed depth for...

Krull was a formative movie for a lot of people. I'm not surprised that there are now adults in creative positions that will sneak in a Krull reference. Rell's death was particularly gruesome for an 80s fantasy flick. File it next to Artax's death in the Neverending Story. One of the few times...

5th level! The only worse one was for Half-orc clerics, at level 4.

The Conan we see in some of the stories that chafes against the responsibilities of rulership, against death getting ever close with age, portraying that I think is the easy part. Getting the action right will be hard. Can Arnold still wield a sword believably? We shall see. Having to rely too...

Me too! I just heard about it listening to the Dystopia Now podcast... which I've been listening to for no particular reason, not at all.

Yeah, while I think some people might have not played a Dwarf of Halfling because some day they might hit a limit, I think for most it just didn't come up in play. I had one campaign that went long enough for it to matter. Far more odious were the limits to which classes they could be. It's...

I'm hopeful that it can happen. There's a ton of source material for older Conan. But what does an older movie-version of Conan look like? I feel like you'd need to draw more from Barbarian's interpretation rather than Destroyer. Look to Arnold's melancholic performance in Maggie rather than The...

There's so much you can do with it! Yeah, it's practically made for Rangers and Druids. And if I ever get around to running that all-dwarves campaign I've been dreaming of for decades, I can think of so many ways to incorporate the gems section. The hints and lore of it is pretty enticing. And...

In the DMG, I feel like there's so much that could be done with the Reputed Magical Properties of Gems and Appendix J: Herbs, Spices, and Medicinal Vegetables sections.

I find that while I can run using PDFs, if I want to learn and retain the information in the first place, I absolutely need a physical copy.

Some of it is luck, sure, but in a lot of ways, it's luck you make. You keep persisting in trying to find the right players, you don't tolerate bad behavior at your table. Even if you've been burned before, you still take that chance on a new player. You maintain and put the effort in to stay...

I quite like Hammerfast as a setting. It felt suitably dwarven while not just being a repeat of all the tropes we've seen before. The funny thing is, I completely missed its existence until years later, probably due to it getting lost in the firehose of product during the 4e era.