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I've always wanted to do a dwarf named Guillermo deBart. It'll never occur to you unless I point it out, but translated into English from various other languages, it comes out as Bill Beard. Which isn't that funny, I guess, unless the dwarf changed his name to get away from Bill Beard...

"The fools... they laughed at my theories, but I'll show them. I'll show them all! The world will prosper under my inspired leadership, and mankind will worship at my feet!" Typically the sort of thing that Doctor Doom would utter. While I'm not going to threaten superscientific devastation of...

I would think that alchemical transmutation would be very difficult for nanotech to perform - you actually have to rip apart atomic nuclei to change the element type, and that's really only possible with high-energy reactors to the best of my knowledge. I don't think a nanite would carry enough...

I get that a lot. - Ever design your own Magic cards? Did that many years ago, was mildly interested to see similar design philosophies in more recent sets revolving around enchantments that turn into creatures. - Ever visit my ghoul evolution page? About three months after I put that up, I...

Don't forget about reclaimation projects, and disaster scars. Humans can be responsible for both - look at the Netherlands for reclaimation; huge chunks of the country are both coastal and below sea level. We haven't managed to create orbitally visible disaster scars yet, but you know the type...

A lot of people seem to like them (and their relatives). Or hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but that's the same thing, really; I consider my task well done. If the shop weren't a good hour's travel from my abode, I'd probably spend longer looking at the book so I could...

I'm responsible for the Overghast Ghoul (related, unofficial, and out-of-date material available here) and the Mosaic Custodian. Congrats to everyone else in there, of course.

I dunno.

The rant makes perfect sense, but as a consumer, I can callously not care and just buy the stuff thoughtlessly... On another note, I liked Starship Troopers (despite the lack of powered armour), and my father (who I believe is entitled to use the rank Major, and was once assigned to a group to...

And yet, much more recently, monkeys and horses have been tried in court. (The monkey for being a Spanish spy, the horse for murder. Unsurprisingly, I think they were both found guilty.) It depends on region, really. Some regions will be sensible, semi-enlightened, and have just enough...

Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds, unsurprisingly, has very many things that just scream 'X-men!' to the reader. The system is great too, but not 100% compatible with D&D (although that's really easy to fix).

Well, look at it this way. You produce X units of merchandise for export per time-period. One merchant unit takes Y many units to another market, taking N time. Over that N time, that merchant is unavailable to export your merchandise, so you hire more merchants to export the goods for export...

Cool. I'm looking forward to getting my copies of this, yessirree. Unfortunately, seeing as I'm in New Zealand, I'm likely to get them long after everyone else. Woe is me. This'll make excellent bragging rights, though. I want to see how their illustrators captured my contributions... partially...

It's been brought up before, but threat analysis isn't always going to be reliable. I remember reading an account from a guy's autobiography; he was in Colombia, coming home from a bar late one night with a friend, when some local people approached them with knives and demanded money. Well...

Well, I set my campaign in medieval Europe, so you'd think I'd go with the annointed kings thing. Wrong! Many countries were indeed ruled by annointed kings, but the Venetian Republic is the home of the campaign, so these king things are from other countries, many of which are co-opted by barons...

Goblins are difficult to take seriously. They're small, they're cowardly, that sort of thing. By comparison, orcs have recently assumed the mantle of noble savages - they may be brutal, violent and nasty, but many people regard them as simply filling that role. (And in Tolkein, they're mutant...

There's absolutely no good reason the wizard wouldn't look at the situation and go, "Hey, that'd put 95% of your haulers and caravan guards out of business, thus wrecking the economy. No deal." The ancient Greeks kept slaves. They also had the brains and technology to build energy weapons, and...

No changes, per se, but for the fact that I don't really let arcane casters ascend beyond level 4 or 5. (Except for the PCs, who are supposed to have a say in the world's fate. Or the Arabs, who are technologically superior at that time. Or the Chinese, who are freakishly advanced compared to...

I like interesting characters. Whether that means they're hot, hideous, or just plain weird, 'normal' is something I really could do without. But that's just my personal philosophy, and 'normal' tends to vary, so 'pudgy biker guy' could well be the exception and thus interesting in particular...

I'm always available (although I've got a bit of a commission queue going right now). Drop by the website in my sig, take a good look around - it's somewhat varied.