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In one 5ed campaign I ran I used a variant on slow, natural healing. Healing potions were largely a controlled item and hoarded by the state for use in war. An army that could heal all of its injured and be back fighting would be quite formidable. As it turned out, the players never remembered...

Friend introduced me to D&D at the age of 9 in 1983. I was and still am a wargaming fan but D&D was mindblowing. Nothing in my first game made a lick of sense. It was awesome.

Never purchased the Masters Set for this reason. Though I did crib the weapon mastery tables from the books of my best friend's parents.

"The Eye of Vecna" always sounded so cool. Dungeons & Dragons: The Eye of Vecna would be a great name for a D&D movie.

Occasionally old stuff like the Gazetteers go on a big sale and you can pick the lot up cheap. Though I don't know how you'd passively be able to track when a sale was happening. I don't think you can put a product on your wishlist like you can at, say, Steam and get an email when it goes on...

I'd pay money for this and I get it for free? Yes, please.

It's a good nonsense word, then, as it had me fooled. Many of the terms used really are Arabic (Al-Qadim, Sahir). And Zakhara deriving from the Arabic verb "to teem or abound" at least made some sense to me as the name for a fantasy land.

Thumbs up! Question: Does anyone know what actual Arabic word is supposed to be represented by "Zakhara"? Is it from the word for "teem" or "abound" or is it a slight mistransliteration of the Arabic for "flower" or maybe a bigger mistransliteration of "desert"?

I saw this survey as a windmill tilting exercise to get new settings for Adventurer's League. I chose Dark Sun and Mystara. My major issue playing and especially DMing was the constantly changing players that would show up. It's a great intro for the game for players, though, who can't...

There's a monster in X2 Castle Amber, the Brain Collector, that, well, collects brains. For each brain collected the monster can cast one 1st to 3rd level spell. I allowed the creature to concentrate on one spell for each brain it had, which basically meant it could concentrate on all of it's...

I guess since it was an N series module that Douglas Niles was given direction to include advice for new DMs.

I use some version of all three (or used). I eventually ditched the healing kit option and added a level of exhaustion at 0 HP. And the long rests weren't exactly having to rest seven days to get all resources back. The net result was that the characters advanced in level more slowly in game...

I started playing D&D in 1983 at the age of 9 while I lived in Montana. The next year I played with someone who was a member of the Crow tribe. He saw Orcs (and other humanoids) as Germanic barbarians. And you don't get much more Aryan than that. I have a dim memory of a conversation that went...

Backed

Love that Holloway cover. I love Holloway's interior art in a number of modules as his b&w art is great and very clear, especially when given a small amount of space on the page. I think Holloway also did art for MERP and Paranoia! and it was good there as well.

I had a player who wanted to be the fighter from the Red Box who watches Aleena die.

I'll echo the "ten-minute turn" idea. Sometimes the old ideas just work. By reducing many things to ten minute blocks - and telling players beforehand I'm doing this - it allows everyone to do something during a typical dungeon delve. Short rests, for purposes of using HD to regain HP, were...

I tell players to think of their characters like movie or TV show creators do - no need for an extensive backstory and you can retcon about anything if you really need to. E.g., Fox Mulder was afraid of fire as shown in an early episode of X-Files and it was never referenced again. We all know...

5e succeeded because of people like me, someone who completely skipped out on 3e and 4e, saw 5e was coming out, read the free rules before the PHB was even published, thought it looked good, made a thread on another RPG website about 5e from the perspective of someone with zero knowledge of 3e...

I'm a huge fan but I really doubt Mystara will ever be brought to 5e. However, unlike Forgotten Realms, Mystara doesn't have decades of cruft that has built up. A "Bargle's Guide to Mystara" would probably be quite fun and I'd like to see what could be done with it in an updated form and not a...