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And so, even if the act is not absolutely evil, the characters are a slight bit more comfortable with the idea of killing helpless things than they were before. They may never experience situations that would cause them to go further down the road to outright selfishness and cruelty, or their...

I'm not sure what I think. I'm being sent to a Purgatory I don't believe in.

I mean that killing them before all hope was lost is the slightly more expedient way. I'm following Maerdwyn's reasoning--the townspeople had the plague too, but we're not killing them to reduce the spread of plague. There is a slippery slope in the utilitarian moral calculus that I think we...

Evil with extenuating circumstances. This time, there was a good motive, but this rogue is now slightly more comfortable with the idea of killing when it is the most expedient thing to do. The first paving stone on that fabled road has been laid. I use a modified "dark side" point system...

I, too, am interested in Midnight, but mainly because I have heard the magic system might be to my taste. How separable is the magic system from the rest of the campaign world?

1.) How many players in your group? 5-6 plus me, the DM. 2.) Do you DM? Yes, practically all the time (the others game without me quite often, but, when I'm gaming, I'm DMing). 3.) Do other people in the group DM, and how many? See above. 4.) What's the Male/Female composition of the...

The child looks great! Do whatever you have time to do. I empathize--I haven't had time to play at all in 2003, and it is quite frustrating (the rather complicated plot is getting stale). Enjoy the time with your child.

I realize that there are many variables outside the system as it is written on paper that affect the issue of high/low magic flavor, but I would be intersted in an assessment of the tendencies of the system beyond simple damage numbers. If D&D 3e as written tends to high magic (an assumption...

Agback: good point about the pull of mindless Eurocentrism. My own genre formulation was a bit broader than is really necessary for this discussion.

Wonderful thread title. Mystic plague: A subtle disease that has no overt symptoms. If the character fails initial save (fort save DC 20), he or she is infected. The character will be unaware of the infection whether the save is made or not. Once per month thereafter, an additional fort save...

I've heard people use "trope" to refer to very specific genre conventions, but I suppose "convention" would be the clearest term. So, what are the main conventions of fantasy? This is actually a complicated question--fantasy novels do exhibit a great deal of variety when examined closely, and...

Like many people here, I'm such a voracious reader (especially when younger) that it's hard to narrow it down. The comment about LeGuin's anxiety about Tolkien is interesting, because I feel that way about LeGuin. Other early influences are Tolkien and Lewis and the Golden Bough, although I've...

Not really centered on the weather, but: I recently had a rather normal dungeon-crawl completely transformed by the simple fact that tehre had been several days of rain previously, covering the floor of the dungeon in about one foot of brackish, foul-smelling water. It made the players...

I see a D&D session as an interactive storyline with three agents acting dynamically: 1. The DM, whose job it is to flesh out the setting and supporting characters, to offer appropriate challenges for the players, and to infuse all of these with enjoyment (meaning that she or he has to get...

The rules look good. I shall be adapting them to my world forthwith. And if I ever get a chance to actually play D&D again, I'll try them out. (with all the people asking for more, I thought you might like some unqualified praise). :)

I believe that the point of the game (if this is like my favorite grad school game which we called "humiliation") is to confess that you have never done something that is so incredibly common that it embarrasses you and forces everyone else to drink (we are playing a drinking game, right, Clay...

Didn't see this until too late (I hope!). I hope you impressed the committee. Even more deeply, I hope you have a job already, or find one very soon. The diss is a great accomplishment--congratulations.

I think this is actually a good set of rules. I may adapt them slightly for a metal-poor campaign world (adjusting prices accordingly). One major difference is that I use a VP/WP system, and already have armor apply its DR to wound point loss only. That makes armor DR not quite as valuable...

There is a 500 mile diameter blast crater (complete with jagged mountains along the edge) caused by a major summoing gone awry several hundred yers before campaign time. Otherwise, most of the magical effects are more subtle and local. I've planted a few rumors about a city untouched in the...

In my campaign (set about 200 years after a large economic catastrophe that reduced population significantly), you can usually number the mages in a country on two hands. Huge and important academies have student populations in the teens at best. "Mage" is the third and highest rank of scholar...