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One can easily justify going in either direction with world building. Isolationist/nationalist/exclusionist societies were very common historically (and still are, one could argue), and that's without the large, real, and undeniable biological differences seen in D&D Land, or the even larger...

This. On the DM side of the table (where I usually sit) I prefer to have gnomes be the dwarves-who-can-use-arcane-magic. They're biologically the same species as dwarves - gnome parents can have dwarven children and vice versa - but a different one for magic purposes. And dwarves who take a...

Thump the mecha-naga, again

Based on the success of my "Brotherhood of Rangers" wilderness campaign, I'd use 3.5e with gestalt characters and with lots of material rule-zeroed out. Maybe have all the characters be gestalt-rogues (Fighter-rogue, cleric-rogue, wizard-rogue, etc.) and hand out high starting ability scores for...

I've played tricks to make gold etc. more valuable in D&D while keeping nominal prices for most things the same. The effect is much like going to a silver standard in terms of the physical weight of gold (or silver) needed to buy an item, but without the need to do a mental shift of gp -> sp all...

As a variant on the original idea: When the arrow is drawn it transforms into a one-horse sleigh, and the bow needs to make a Fortitude save (DC 25) to avoid being destroyed. However if drawn with a Bow that has the Holy special ability (a "Bow of Holy"), the transformation does not take place...

To me, the old use of "referee" instead of "Dungeon Master" implies the style of play where the monsters are being run by another player. DM or GM is someone who both runs the monsters and adjudicates the rules (among other things). As for giving the monsters an even break, I strongly prefer...

I GM more than I play, so I have the GM power to rule-zero out the parts I don't like. Right now I'm running a "Brotherhood of Rangers" campaign where the PCs are all gestalt-rangers (fighter-ranger gestalt, wizard-ranger gestalt, cleric-ranger gestalt, etc.) I'm trying to keep the house rules...

"It's a fair cop, guv." I didn't rely entirely on the So. California numbers, but I did put disproportionate weight on them. Mostly because the other figures I found ran heavily to tree densities resulting from deliberate (and therefore unnaturally intense) reforestation efforts. So I discounted...

Yes, I've been in forests before, both the kind where the first limbs of the trees are 15 feet up, and the kind where the limbs are so low as to produce a "heavy underbrush" effect or worse. And a few kinds in-between. My point is that, by the SRD: A creature standing in the same square as a...

Thinking about this further: If tree trunks are always considered to be at grid intersections, then "tree" squares are the 4 or 12 squares in a 5 ft or 10 ft radius from the trunk. "Massive" tree squares are then the 4 squares completely blocked by a massive tree trunk growing at the...

OK, that's one way to look at it. Except... this means that standing under a tree allows you to use the tree as cover, or to climb it, even if you are standing 10 or 15 feet away from the trunk, and even if the branches are high enough that you don't have to duck. Also, how then do you interpret...

And if you're able to just wing it without spending a lot of time on "Hey, why do my forests look so fugly and suck to run encounters in?" then more power to you.

Well, I want rules or guidelines that give me an approximately correct number of trees per acre because I want my forests to look like forests. More generally, I want to be approximately realistic, in places where realism isn't a buzzkill, for the sake of adding verisimilitude to an otherwise...

Either the "Forest Terrain" rules in the 3.5 SRD don't make any sense, or I'm grossly misinterpreting them. There's an old thread about how the percentages for "trees, massive trees, etc." are suppose to be guidelines for GM mapping rather than 'Roll for each 5 ft square to see what terrain it...

Fall of '78. I had just started college. I came across a flyer advertising "Bilbo's Birthday Party" - the annual recruiting bash for the university's Tolkien society. And already being a big Tolkien fan, I of course went. And there were a lot of D&D players, wargamers, SCA members, SF fans etc...

I do something similar in my homebrew. The standard gold pieces have a bunch of different names, depending on the nation that minted them. However, I also have gold "half crowns" (half the weight and value of the standard gp) and gold "marks" (one-quarter the weight and value of the standard...

I like the *concept* of point buy, and it's the right system for Hero, GURPS, etc. I also see the problem of random rolls blessing or hosing the player due to the whim of the Dice Gods. OTOH, I see randomness in character generation as an important D&D tradition, and I dislike the way the...

I started back when AD&D 1e was just coming out - the Monster Manual and PHB were available, but not the DMG. My take is that 3.5 isn't really any more complicated than 1e, it just seems like it because the 1e rules tended to be too confusing for mere mortals to follow. So most of the complexity...

Hello Hello world.