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<Off-topic rant incoming.> I used to have a lot of sympathy for GRRM. "Song of Ice and Fire" currently stands at 1.7 million words. Outside of epic fantasy with its tolerance for giant doorstoppers, a typical novel runs about 100,000 -- ASoIaF is already the length of 17 normal-sized novels...

"May you play with kender." --Ancient Gygaxian curse

Nitpicking here, but Aragorn never took on the Nine. He managed to startle five of them into withdrawing when they weren't expecting resistance; but he himself was surprised they didn't return to resume the assault, implying they held the advantage. (Since the Witch-King had tagged Frodo with a...

Looking back, the one time in D&D's entire history where I generally approve of the folks in charge was the period between Wizards acquiring TSR and Peter Adkison leaving -- the time when 3E was made and the OGL implemented. Even then, I have to equivocate a bit. WotC's early culture under...

It goes back at least to 2E. Nontheistic clerics have been a thing for a very long time.

From a business point of view, I agree that this was a huge missed opportunity. As a fan of both Tolkien and D&D, however, I'm glad it never happened. D&D was designed to create sword and sorcery adventures in the Robert E. Howard vein, and it does that very well. I already dislike the Tolkien...

From what I can tell, TSR was in a fiery screaming dive into bankruptcy when she took over. She pulled it out. If she hadn't, then D&D might have gone the way of a thousand other '80s fads. So "the game might have ceased to exist without her" seems like a pretty compelling case for her being a...

You're thinking of trademark law. Copyright doesn't work that way.

It's not like the 2014 stealth rules were better. WotC seems very stuck on making stealth into a "cloaking field" that is either powered up or deactivated, and you have to take active measures to power it up.

It sounds like it's per turn, not per round. If so, Shield wouldn't interfere with other spells unless you cast it on your own turn (e.g., to stop an opportunity attack).

Tolkien was familiar with Howard's works and "rather enjoyed" them (in contrast to his sharply critical attitude toward much other fantastical fiction of his day).

When LotR was written, it was rare to acknowledge that your story was set in a totally invented world, even if it obviously was. The claim that Middle-Earth is a "prehistory" of the real world is the sort of fig leaf used to excuse such invention. I don't think we need hold Tolkien to any...

He wouldn't have agreed with what he himself wrote? I mean, sure, his vision of Middle-Earth evolved over his lifetime, but by the point he was answering questions about it in his letters, the legendarium was extensively developed. There's no reason to suppose his conception of Numenor changed...

There are three groups of D&D players: 1) Those who prefer digital assets and are willing to pay for them. 2) Those who prefer physical books and are willing to pay for them. 3) Those who would rather use a crappy pirated PDF than pay for either. People in group 3 were never going to provide...

"Can craft an item from a Fast Crafting table, which lasts until you finish another Long Rest." What the hell is this crap? Fast Crafting tables? If I wanted to play a CRPG, I'd be playing a friggin' CRPG. I was looking forward to 5.24, but I sure hope this is not representative of how the new...

So, in essence what you are doing here is giving Strahd the option to replace a player-inflicted debuff with a custom debuff tailored to his statblock. I like this. I like it a lot. It accomplishes the goal of LR (limiting the ability of single-target debuffs to devastate a solo monster), but...

I believe human creative thought consists mostly of the following: a) Spotting connections between seemingly unrelated things. b) Discerning previously undetected patterns. c) Testing these connections and patterns to determine which are valid and useful, and which are spurious or dead ends. d)...

For most people, probably not. We have reached a steady state with COVID, where there's little prospect of things changing in the foreseeable future, so any precautions folks are not willing to keep up indefinitely are apt to go by the wayside. That said: It is still significantly more...

Something thematically in between dogs and deer. Maybe a goat?

I agree with voles or mice for the hobbits, and foxes for the wizards. Deer for the Elves. Badgers for the Dwarves. Men in general are dog breeds -- pugs or bulldogs in Bree, greyhounds in Rohan, Rottweilers or something in Gondor. Aragorn and the Dunedain are cats. (Yes, this is inconsistent...