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The Wizard is an Arcane Scholar in a game where careful research in libraries and laboratories barely exist. The Wizard isn't generally regarded as underpowered.

The Golden Rhinoceros - which I borrowed from my local library - covers African kingdoms from the 9th to 15th century. Slim and there's a lot of short chapters on different places but it's also got a decent bibliography. I don't know of an equivalent for ancient Africa - there were some places...

Roman trade went very far indeed. There's a surviving text, The "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which covers ports as far as India and a fair way down the coast of Africa. How much trade there was is debatable; plenty of Roman writers complaining about expensive luxuries will tell you that huge...

Yes, Africa had contact across the Indian Ocean for a very long time (notably, part of the population of Madagascar is clearly from Malaya/Indonesia by genetics). nd even if you don't believe the tale of Hanno the Navigator circumnavigating Africa, it's close to certain that the Romans traded...

There's a whole genre of video games based around stealth and solving puzzles. There are certainly plenty of video games where the MMO Holy Trinity means the Rogue gets to be DPS and there's almost no non-combat content, but they're a distinct minority. Garrick (from the Thief series) is simply...

Up to 3rd level I'm fine with. Above that anything needs to be a ritual and really shouldn't be something you can just cast with a little money. You want to use a Meteor Swarm to bring down a city wall so your army of skeletons can storm it and carry off the citizens to be used for a mass...

That's kind of the problem, isn't it. You make the Rogue a good class across all levels by making the things it's good at be more significant at higher levels. Not just slightly higher numbers on things that you've been doing since 1st level, but actual abilities that make sense both...

"That's just a Pangolin." Diogenes.

Is any edition of D&D good for political campaigns? At moss there are some subsystems outside the core rules that do a bit; and they don't always interact well with the main rules. I don't think 5e has anything along those lines.

It's not as if rain is great for conventional bows (crossbows, since they sometimes had a steel "string", are a different matter). And it's also an exaggeration to say black powder weapons "don't work in the rain", even matchlocks are usable although you'll get more misfires. From a military...

Considering that some of the advantages of early gunpowder weapons over bows/crossbows aren't even considered in D&D, I don't really see any reason to invent an entirely fictional disadvantage to make them even less desirable. Anyway, the one thing I think would be essential to any redesign of...

It's dehydrated. You have to add water to reconstitute it.

This is the basics of it. My FLGS participates and most of the companies I buy from are in the scheme. The website with the list of companies and stores is Bits and Mortar

One you've missed, and I've got a fair bit of material from there, is through the Bits and Mortar scheme. That of course isn't digital product alone so I'm not sure whether you want to count it but you it is one way I get digital material.

Chaosium, for all that I love their products, have in the past often over-promised and under-delivered when it comes to production schedules. While they've been doing better lately, having Mearls who is experienced in that area certainly can't hurt.

When: 1977 For: Traveller Why: D&D isn't a SF game and I wanted to play some SF. When did I come back? I never came back to D&D being my main game. I've played short, and even long, campaigns of D&D since, and I do pay attention to the system. I occasionally used to pick up sourcebooks if I...

It seems like a deliberate choice. Some things are done with spells, and there are plenty of people who will argue that anything but the most basic ability, if there's a spell that does it, should not be available by other means than magic. So there are people who will argue that because there's...

If we're assuming mundane equipment might be a problem, I think a Fighter with no weapons or armour might be just a teensy bit at a disadvantage too.

In D&D, making some one bleed is a magical effect. You can't break someone's arm with a heavy blow to the shield they're holding. You can't even move at the same time someone else is. Think even reality is too much for Fighters to have.

Achilles picks up a rock "that ten strong men of today could not lift" and throws it (at Hector iirc, certainly in a major fight). It seems like the sort of ability some high-level Fighters could have.