Recent content by SWBaxter

In Dennis McKiernan's Mithgar books, the dwarves chant "Dwarven axes! Dwarven might!" in their own language. I always liked that bit.

My first MMORPG was Ultima Online, which I started playing some time in 2000. My first tabletop RPG was AD&D in 1979, I dunno offhand if I would've given UO a try had I not been a gamer - I know that a lot of my initial interest in the MMORPG concept was due to images I had of a 24/7 D&D...

Arcana Unearthed has lots of spellcasting classes, but just one spell list. All casters can heal (if they've readied the appropriate spells that day). Makes for a different dynamic, not in a bad way. In D&D, wizards are traditionally bad at healing due to niche protection. No real compelling...

Fantasy Games Unlimited went into semi-hibernation for a long time, but published enough stuff to retain the rights to the game, and wouldn't sell them to Jeff Dee and Jack Herman (the original authors). With the rise of the PDF market, FGU made most of the V&V line available, so you can get...

Since Elsir Vale is apparently part of WOTC's implied setting, some history tidbits from Red Hand of Doom that could be imported: - There was a major dwarf kingdom in the mountains near Elsir Vale more than a thousand years ago. They built the Dawn Way, the major road through the vale, as part...

Great thread. Wish I'd found it before I spent a day combing through the core books for tidbits to add to my own setting. Some additions: - Dwarves were created by Moradin. In addition to the azers, galeb duhr are also former dwarves still in the service of giants. - Moradin gave the first...

I wouldn't be particularly shocked if one or more of the early GSL products involves powers - maybe one book for monsters, another for class powers. I don't think it would be too difficult to arrange all the MM powers by role and level, genericize them a bit, then figure out some basic scaling...

My impression of the 4e alignments is that running "an evil character with depth in a manner not disruptive to the overall game experience" falls under "unaligned". The Evil and Chaotic Evil alignments are for the firmly villainous, childish or otherwise. So I don't think I'd allow the PCs to...

That's a behavioural difference, and far from the only one so it's hard to consider it "the outstanding feature." Biologically, the major difference between us and our closest primate relatives is brain size, both in overall terms and when considering the ratio of the different parts of the...

Do you mean Vancouver, BC, Canada or Vancouver, WA, USA? If the former, I know of a few places with good used RPG sections: First is on Broadway, just west of Granville, ABC Book and Comic Emporium. It's a huge used book store with about a bookcase and a half full of RPG stuff on the right as...

On first readthrough, I'm a huge 4e fan, ready to get a game going ASAP. The advice I gave a buddy of mine who's on the fence about 4e is "don't convert your current campaign." 4e's a fine rulesystem, but it's very different from 3.x in some fairly fundamental ways - I think conversion in...

I'm thinking of doing the same thing. I have this idea for using the Rise of the Runelords to bring about a magical cataclysm and create my 4e points of light setting. Dunno if it'll happen, but I think it'd be cool.

I'm gonna say "at least two, probably three." And lots more if you start expanding the adventure hooks. Otherwise: WOTC's original adventure path (Sunless Citadel etc.) is 1-20. 3.0, but not a tough conversion. WOTC also has Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, 4-14ish. 3.0, tougher...

Well, we haven't seen their take on monsters and encounters yet, and that's where any such changes will likely reside. However, it's also possible that isn't as big an issue for Paizo because they're creating the system specifically to support Pathfinder adventures, which means that prep time...

See, even if that were a true statement - and the differences are considerably greater than that, so it's not - that would be enough to make BRP a pretty groundbreaking ruleset, because in OD&D class and level were two of the major ways to differentiate one character from another. Getting rid of...