Recent content by Ralif Redhammer

I'm thankful that they've got so many old D&D products available as print-on-demand on DriveThruRPG. As those older books get more and more expensive, it's nice to have a low-cost alternative. Having an "ADND Beyond" would be cool, but extremely unlikely.

Would have been nice, that's for sure. I keep thinking about hooking up my old Wii U to replay Human Revolution. I dunno, looking at the announced releases of ExeKiller and No Law, which appear to be influenced by Cyberpunk 2077, that didn't stop other studios from following suit. Heck, even a...

It seems to me that even with its rocky start, once it was clear how successful Cyberpunk 2077 was, it would be a no-brainer to start developing a Shadowrun game. Because all of those players are going to finish it and replay it again and again want something new to scratch that itch.

It's been a hot minute since I looked at the 1e Monk. Egads is it a lot to take in, in so many ways!

Generally, quite the opposite!

The way I see it, if I'm wearing heavy armor and my character drowns, that's on me. But the thing about having a weakness is that you get that tension that makes a game exciting. In a con game, I narrowly avoided that very fate, and it was exciting and dangerous and part of what makes a game...

Honestly, I've yet to see a character have significantly more survivability for having an 18 in their Prime Requisite. The last time I ran an AD&D game, I had a PC with an 18 strength, playing a Barbarian (also I am 99% sure in hindsight that they were cheating on their dice rolls). They still...

Back in the day we used 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange as you see fit. I never used it, but I kinda like BECMI's option to drop 2 points from another stat to raise your prime requisite by 1.

Shadowrun Anarchy's slimmer design makes me a fan of it. I do hope that 2e makes character creation a bit less crunchy. It was still more work than I want in a game to put together a new character. Once you get up and running, at the least, it's pretty smooth. I think that their hearts were in...

On the one hand, Shadowrun tried. On the other hand, a lot of the ideas and language around inclusivity just weren't present in the late 80s/early 90s. They made some pretty rough mistakes. They featured indigenous peoples, but in ways still heavily indebted to stereotypes.

Ignoring the questionable archery, yeah, I do like how clean it is. Makes me realize how tired I have gotten of the painterly, blurry-around-the-edges art that Wizards has often employed for its covers.

My take is that while Tom Bombadil is not important to the narrative, he is important to the themes of the book. That sense of mystery and history. That even in the darkest times, there are places untouched. There are people and things over which the shadow holds no power.

I found Curse of the Azure Bonds to hold up fairly well, as far as old D&D fiction goes. Yeah, a lot of the TESCREAL nonsense is based on magical thinking. They have no idea how to make a super-intelligent AI, even conceptually, so they just say "AI will figure out how to do it." That being...

The name I would go with would be Shadowdrek.