Search results

Kickstarter is great for distributing and reducing risk: instead of guessing how many books to print, a small publisher can find out how many customers they have and then print the books. It doesn't make sense for a publisher that is pretty sure it can quickly sell through its first printing...

I like the idea of mapping out the Kingswood, the Ocean and the Sea. I don't think we need to map the borders of Thring, however—I imagine that they're fairly malleable and that a Lord Sanguine and a Thringish Count would disagree powerfully no matter where you placed the border!

Hi folks, I've made two maps of the Shrouded Lands to replace the last two I made ages ago. Fingerpainting is the map of the different regions so far. Hexes is the map of the different regions so far with the hexes as a layer beneath it. I've also updated the appendices to include all the hex...

Erratum: The entry for the Warbling Coast has the word 'next' when it should be 'nest'. My first entry is another attempt to explain a discrepancy: whether the Pirate Kings are cloud giants or storm giants. The Chalk Cliffs Overlooking The Stormhead (01.04) Why do the Pirate Kings so...

Good summation, Daztur! Also worth noting is that the Black Ziggurat has some weird stuff going on, including windows that look out over different lands - possibly extraplanar ones.

Hey Daztur, it looks good! One quibble: you should specify that the Creative Commons licence is 'Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported), <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>' EDIT: And by Daztur I of course mean chutup!

A Modest Proposal Hi folks, Love the idea of gnomes living between the walls of giants' dwellings: I think halflings and gnomes are the least-interesting of our demihumans so far, so it's good to see that changing. I've updated the appendix. I've been wondering for a while now if there's...

I've updated the appendices. I'm finding the evolution of the King in Splendour very interesting. The description of the tarrasque as the 'greatest of all beasts' reminded me of Behemoth, and that reminded me of this fascinating triplet of posts from Beyond the Golem about how, according to...

Very interesting contributions, chutup! One possible way of using that material is that it's not the heroes but the villains who put that plan in motion, and the heroes have to stop them. One quibble, you say that the people of Bergolast sent the spear "to the far side of the world, to the...

For someone who's never played these games, could you explain in which ways they captured the feel of D&D?

Perhaps you're thinking of Mike Mearls, who talked about having a copy of open source guidebook The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Great work on the compilation, Daztur. One thing you're missing is one hook for the Witch Queen (23.16) - "What connection does this Witch Queen have with the Witch Queen of Cragsend?" I've updated the appendices. The Jester Prince (additional information for 16.16.02) Every year, the...

I think one of the reasons people have reacted against 4E is that they felt that the mechanics were abstracted from the fiction, that what their powers could do mechanically was removed from what should happen in the fiction. They weren't being entertained as much as they might be. They may not...

Good use of the gibberlings - beats the Forgotten Realms version of them as yet another small monstrous humanoid. They also remind me (in a good way) of spawned monsters in a computer game - 'who the hell is forging hundreds of bronze daggers every day?' 'Don't worry about verisimilitude - just...

It is not just any game, though. One thing that distinguishes roleplaying games from most other types of game is that in roleplaying games the fiction influences the mechanical decisions of the players. Having a jarring disconnect between the fiction and the mechanics undermines one of the...

Someone mentioned Stephen Brust in passing, but I'd definitely second that - for the smart-talking anti-hero protagonist, for the frequent use of resurrection magic and other high magic elements, and for the encounters with high-level NPCs like Sethra Lavode.

Maybe we're talking at cross purposes. I don't mind themes lasting five levels, if that's how many levels-worth of content they have for them. I have no problem with someone following one theme for five levels, then finding another for five, and so on, if that makes sense within the story. What...

Experience levels seem legit enough, yeah. Your character becomes incrementally better at things, and occasionally learns new things. If you're a fifth level fighter, upon gaining sixth level you learn something new about fighting. What does not make sense to me is why a fifth level lurker...

I don't think getting a new class at a different tier makes sense in the fiction. That's one reason I'm not a fan of paragon classes: why do I get the powers of a wizard of the Spiral Tower at level 11? What if I start training with them at level 6? What if I start training with them at level...

Good to see! I later added in an extra hook for the Haunt of the Witch Queen because I realised Cragsend already has a Witch Queen; it's missing from the compilation: What connection does this Witch Queen have with the Witch Queen of Cragsend? The best places for it to go! One end of the...