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Nyxborn + Lifelong Companion is a nice combo . . . if a god has a favored champion, why not create an ally to look after that champion? Nyxborn + Lifelong Companion + Divine Sorcerer or Celestial Warlock is especially good . . . a wielder of mysterious arcane powers, to support the more...

Bronzepunk artificers are a very appealing option.

I have posted this idea before, but I'd also like to try a character or campaign based on The Mighty Sons of Hercules. Legends say that Hercules begat 50 sons upon the fifty daughters of Thespius. For game purposes, I would assume that this seemed like a good idea at the time, but then a...

I kinda like the notion of a classic Steve Reeves type. Could be a heroism paladin, certainly, but zealot barbarian would keep things loinclothy. Might make that guy a demigod, and give him an all-mortal half-brother companion. Maybe a rogue inquisitive, for a brains + brawn combo? Or a...

A lot of people forget this, but in the first version of D&D, instead of orcs, it was all Big Dumb Swedes. In Wisconsin, prejudice against Swedes was intense and widespread.

Always interested in support for non-magical types who rely on different abilities.

Having read a little bit about the emergent genre of "hopepunk," I've actually been thinking about RPG campaigns that try to explore those themes and capture a bit of the zeitgeist. "Diverse common folk rising up to oppose fascist overlords" could happen in LotR or Star Wars . . . what would...

Others have already said what I was gonna say. D&D tends to feature an awful lot of lethal force, and almost always exercised by a group with no real accountability, and in the year 2020, seeing that behavior in association with law enforcement is not good. And saying "good guys don't murder"...

Yeah, that's the one. Evil Black-Skinned Race vs. Good Alabaster-Skinned Race is part of the problem, certainly. As I recall, I thought that particular book failed just because based upon the society described therein, the only sane thing for a drow PC to do is get the hell away from that...

Interesting. My last experience with the drow was that setting-neutral book they did between 4th and 5th Editions. Certainly, some thoughtful writers have gone to considerable lengths to develop drow society into something plausible, or at least interesting, but there's also a lot of stuff...

Sounds like there's still going to be room in the game for both purely inherently evil beings (demons, devils, gnolls) and other beings who are free-willed but maybe default to "evil" cultures in the default settings. Just the recent effort to dig in on the psychology and cultures of...

What, Ravenloft? All those guys with capes? The second gayest setting, sir. Because Dark Sun is just all loinclothy.

I've been impressed by the Tome of Foes not just stopping at "evil," but trying to dig in on WHY some of these non-human cultures are evil, and what specifically is evil about them.

GILGAMESH AND ENKIDU AT URUK.

I'm increasingly liking the "Brushfire Wars" idea, and that the cast has to be cheap. So I'm thinking Carl Weathers, Martin Kove, Tia Carrere, Michael Dudikoff, Christopher Lambert . . . that tier of action hero.

Oh, "Commando" was the greatest. In fact, the other great campaign idea is to just play the "Brushfire Wars" supplement front to back, keeping it all in the late 1980s. I would allow era-appropriate cyberwarfare if someone wanted to play Mainframe from "G.I. Joe" --- Vietnam vet lugging...

Just keep it feeling like a B-movie on a videotape, y'know? With some ninjas, and Uzis, and maybe some of the co-stars from "Predator." And Cory Everson from ESPN's "Bodyshaping."

For a couple years in the late 1980s, Top Secret S.I. was my jam. Just got to looking at the three-part "Web Wars" campaign, where a team of agents gets involved in espionage shenanigans on a fictional Caribbean island. Now that would be a hell of a campaign to try in the year 2020 if you...

I love Unearthed Arcana. Just a free monthly peek at work-in-progress, and we all weigh in now instead of after publication.

Indeed. And getting back to the Faceman idea, there maybe isn't a rogue subclass that is built around that archetype, but if you do Expertise (Bluff and Diplomacy) and then go Mastermind or Swashbuckler, you can at least get close (and Inquisitive kinda works too, for a guy who listens as well...