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  1. Ralif Redhammer

    AD&D 2E Huh. AD&D 2e is my favorite D&D

    "Stop if you've heard this one before. A priest of Lathander, a priest of Sharess, and a priest of Helm walk into a bar..."
  2. Ralif Redhammer

    What videogames are you playing in 2025?

    Elden Ring has this wonderful mythic quality to the world. It stands in contrast to Dark Souls, which I always liken to a very old-school grim and gritty Greyhawk-y dungeon crawl.
  3. Ralif Redhammer

    Will AI replace Dungeon Masters?

    AI is great for searching and organizing large amounts of information. It is not great at creativity. I've no doubt that AI could run an acceptable one-shot, but over the course of a campaign, I think it's limitations would become evident, and a degree of sameness would creep in. Things would...
  4. Ralif Redhammer

    Choosing a new campaign

    True. What there was a consensus on was their least favorite choice. No one wanted to play a campaign of OD&D.
  5. Ralif Redhammer

    What videogames are you playing in 2025?

    Bloodborne is a wonderful game, though that initial stretch before you can start leveling up can be brutal. The soundtrack is one of my favorites. If the Cleric Beast theme doesn't get you hyped to hunt some monsters, nothing will:
  6. Ralif Redhammer

    Choosing a new campaign

    The last time one of my groups needed to decide on our next game, I made a Qualtrics form with five choices and asked them each to rank them. The interesting thing was that there was no clear consensus on people's top choices - it wasn't until the second pick that we had a clear winner.
  7. Ralif Redhammer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I watched the Peripheral TV series, so I really should get to the books. One of the things I love about Moorcock is that as many times as he has revisited Elric of Melnibone, he has never given into the temptation to alter the finite, fixed endpoint of the character's story.
  8. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General Should Gnomes be Tiny

    As much as I love the Gnomes book, having been a fan since I was pretty much gnome-sized myself, I think making them tiny in D&D causes too much trouble downstream.
  9. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General Do you play in person or online?

    Online. The one group has someone a state away, so we're staying that way. The other group could meet in person, but we've come to really enjoy the convenience of online gaming.
  10. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General What Campaign Would Appeal the Most?

    2e Mere of Dead Men, no contest. Bring on the kits (Or maybe not. As much as they are a signature mechanic of 2e, I'm not always sure they were the right move)!
  11. Ralif Redhammer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I finished reading Neuromancer. It has to have been at least 15 years since I last read it. And it's still, positively one of the most electric books I've ever read. I spent ten minutes weighing what to follow it up with. In the end, rather than try to match it, I went the opposite route and...
  12. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

    Definitively. And it's not just the fact that their kids are reading fantasy, but that your doctor felt comfortable bringing it up with you in the first place.
  13. Ralif Redhammer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    Two of my favorite books, those. Discovering them for the first time as a teenager was mind-blowing.
  14. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

    I think Patrick Rothfuss gets by on a lot of his flaws due to how gorgeous and lyrical his writing is. While I am hoping that there's a degree of unreliable narrator at work, particularly with some of the more absurd stuff in Wise Man's Fear, to date there has been no indication that that is...
  15. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General Favorite Iconic D&D Metropolis

    CISO was a groundbreaking release, coming out four years before the Greyhawk Folio, six years before Flying Buffalo's Citybook I. That was one trippy adventure.
  16. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

    Anyone else remember in the 90s when a VHS tape with 2-3 episodes of an anime show on it cost $20? So good. The psychedelia is something that went over my head as a kid, probably because it was too heavy and out there for me to encompass.
  17. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

    I read Lumley's Necroscope series when I was younger, but I didn't discover his Titus Crowe series until much later, when I went deep into Appendix N research. It's a decent take, though I think the second book in the series is a bit of a wobble.
  18. Ralif Redhammer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    That sounds way better than the paperback I grew up reading - it had such a hideous cover, like a bad illustration of Bela Lugosi. Still, I read it until it fell apart.
  19. Ralif Redhammer

    The Greatest Literary Villains of All Time

    Yeah, it's got to be Dracula, with all apologies to Sauron. Dracula's impact is just massive, and as a villain he is loaded down with symbolism that continues to resonate through the ages.
  20. Ralif Redhammer

    D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

    The works of Ruthanna Emrys, Victor LaValle, Kij Johnson, even Brian Lumley take HPL's ideas and run with them either without the bigotry, or directly addressing it. I love M.R. James! Perfect for creeping dread and whelming superstition. HPL was not the only one doing cosmic horror, or the...
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