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Stunningly useless, really. Amazing that it doesn't even mention the abolition of multiclassing, which you'd think might be important for the large majority of characters who splash something other than their base class?

It's hard to say whether Lord of the Rings is best described as a low-magic setting (characters have wimpy spells/equipment because nearly all spells/equipment in the world are wimpy) or as a different-magic setting (where magic items tend to look normal and casters for whatever reason tend to...

My recollection is that Gandalf has generally been statted as a bard rather than a wizard due to his preeminent knowledge of lore, notably weak evocation spells and signature gift of inspiring others.

The special thing for rangers could be casting (like the fighter subclass that grants limited wizard spells), or it could be traps/terrain (like several MMOs), or it could be a temporary companion (like Drizzt's panther), or it could be a 3e-style permanent companion. I could see any of those...

Whenever people design characters, they have a backstory in mind with ongoing attachments that provide a mix of costs and benefits to the character. If my character served in Cormyr's army, for example, he may have contacts within it that can provide useful information or equipment from time to...

It would be very odd indeed if a class whose members immediately fall upon the commission of an evil act needed "detect evil" to see whether their overall alignment had drifted to evil, as the mere fact that they could still cast the spell or use the ability would prove it hadn't. On a broader...

Does the OP mean: 1) Is anyone unhappy that paladins can be any alignment? or 2) Is anyone unhappy that paladins can have any code of conduct? If #1, then my answer is no, because I've long felt it would be possible to follow the traditional paladin behavioral code (alignment restriction...

I don't actually see a big difference between 4e's roles and the traditional fighter/thief/cleric/MU paradigm AD&D has used from the very beginning: Fighter/defender - "Tank" with the strength and durability to protect other party members Thief/striker - "Commando" with the stealth and DPS to...

WotC has obviously thought deeply about what lessons to draw from 3e's OGL and how best to use ancillary material as "advertising" for the core books. Doubtless there will be some who will say WotC is unnecessarily giving away their intellectual property, dooming 5e to subpar growth and then...

I don't agree with your historical take at all. Sure, diehards for each edition were unhappy and made their opinion known in electronic forums, but highly unhappy people are always the most highly motivated posters so this shouldn't be taken to mean they actually spoke for many people. And...

No one is saying WotC is the enemy, or that they are not now genuinely trying to improve the game. Many of us do think they made ill-considered decisions when developing 4e that ended up fracturing the gaming community, but I'd certainly agree with you that the people who made those decisions...

That's exactly the kind of thinking Dancey was fighting against when he created the OGL. The OGL absolutely didn't "guarantee" that a new edition would fail. Rather, it guaranteed that if WotC elected to muscle through a new edition that was judged inferior by a significant chunk of the gaming...

I don't agree with this at all. Ryan Dancey understood that core rulebooks drive WotC's profits and that a vibrant third-party adventure marketplace would actually increase core-book sales, raising profits for the entire industry including WotC. He saw the OGL as the means to accomplish this...

I agree. Adventures are small potatoes for WotC but can serve a valuable advertising purpose in encouraging gamers to pick up copies of the core books, which is where WotC gets the vast bulk of its D&D revenue. Part of the genius of the OGL was to foster a vibrant third-party adventure...

Much of what you write would be better termed "aspirations" than "goals," as no one at WotC ever believed or wanted the rules to be fully modular (in the sense of having no core rules at all), nor did they ever think Next could completely unite the fanbase. If this were not so, then we'd see a...

Sure, actions speak far more eloquently to PC motivations than professions -- no argument there. That the DM would track actions, gauge intent, and render judgments about the morality of those actions is no surprise, but it hardly implies the actions themselves had an alignment independent of...

I agree that there cannot be two correct answers in the same campaign for whether Trotsky is Good or Evil. Just as is true with every finding of fact in the campaign, the DM is ultimately responsible for making that determination, and players have to live with what he says (or else find another...

The alignment rules aren't designed to say whether any particular person's social vision is worthy of support. All they are designed to do is say whether the person promulgating the vision is motivated by a desire to help/harm people or free/order them -- that's it. Multiple people with the...

In the case of the Founding Fathers, I don't think it's especially tough to do the analysis here. The Federalists were by and large Lawful, seeing Order as the main objective and government as the way to achieve that objective. The Anti-Federalists were by and large Chaotic, seeing Freedom as...

This is where I disagree. Being "sincere" in your convictions is one thing, and I'd certainly grant that any of the leaders you mentioned were sincere in the sense of being true to their core beliefs. But I wouldn't at all agree that the pursuit of universal emancipation drove any of them, or...