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Precisely my thoughts.

Is it something like this map? I mean, when you look at where the familiar parts of Middle-earth are on that map, the sheer vastness of the unexplored lands boggles the mind. Whatever happened to the Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who went to those eastern and southern parts of the world...

In Moorcock's Corum books, the Vadhagh (Corum's race) had the ability to move between the planes at will. The effect of this ability is so similar to the Eladrin Fey Step (turning invisible and reappearing again a short distance away) that I'd wager to guess Fey Step was chiefly inspired by the...

A great essay! Thanks for sharing. :) Jim has a pretty pointed way of expressing himself, but I suspect it's just tough love.

The suspense, the suspense! Beautiful strip. And Haley looks kinda cute with short hair.

Oh, it certainly wasn't because I've got something against the Artificer and the Swordmage - just that the classes in the matrix are "the core", as in published in the Player's Handbooks. No value judgement intended. :)

Well, were one to adapt 4E for roleplaying in Middle-earth, I imagine one would first have to decide whether to aim for the feel of the books or the feel of the movies (which do not feel at all like Tolkien to me). :)

You could probably use the tier system so that the First Age would be Epic, the Second Age Paragon and the Third Age Heroic only. Something like this would help bring that Tolkien feel to the game, as his legendarium follows Hesiod's classic myth of each era being lesser than the one that...

If we leave out setting specific classes such as the Artificer and the Swordmage, WotC appears to be going for four classes per each power source. If we put the classes in PHB1 and PHB2 together, it seems safe to assume that we get the following matrix: Arcane Divine...

I think the Dragonborn will fit right in. Change the name, however - preferably to something less bland than Dray. I have to say no to shoehorning Athas into the default cosmology. I feel that each setting can only benefit from being a unique creation rather than a part of some metanarrative...

In Finnish the word aasi means 'donkey', and by extension, 'stupid'. You can guess I'm not a fan of the word aasimar. In my mind 'daeva' is strongly associated with the demonic spirits of Zoroastrianism, and thus is no good either. 'Deva' is nearly perfect, and like it was said on page 1...

Hi there! Siberys's recent Kenku conversion made me wonder how viable the aarakocra would be in 4th Edition. Here are some of my thoughts. I wanted the race to have a form of flight from the beginning, and to balance it out some penalties were in order. However, I've only played in two...

One of the craziest (and most intriguing!) thoughts I've been kicking around lately is to make my personal Dark Sun update classless. Since I'll shove the Divine classes out of the setting and relegate the Arcane power source to rituals alone - more on that below - I'm basically left with the...

What about the Balor and the Marilith? Any chance of getting their stats? :)

Holy crap the Brom piece is sweet.

To me it sounds like something out of a sick fever dream. In other words, wholly appropriate.

In the Elric stories Chaos was definitely capital E evil and Law represented the forces of good. However, this was simply because Elric's world was being overrun by the forces of Chaos. When the cosmic balance is tipped towards either Law or Chaos it usually spells doom for the mortal world...

This is actually what I was thinking. If we forget for a moment the D&D specific notion of Chaotic, chaos in mythology has always been in direct opposition to the material universe, which is essentially a product of imposing order upon chaos. Evil is a part of the world, whereas chaos is outside...

I think that there are only a handful of depictions of Demogorgon that really catch the eye. Some examples: However, I personally like the lither, long-necked design better, such as in this image:

Then again, the delay will all but guarantee that the D will be a tougher opponent than the star of the first Monster Manual - you gotta amp up the challenge as the players become more familiar with the system. Hee hee. I think I was the first to call out this particular detail here. Make it a...