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New and Updated Species A few days ago, Wizards of the Coast released an article summarizing the playable Species that appear in the upcoming revised edition of the Player’s Handbook. Since my sourcebook is designed to accommodate any edition of the game, the Species options in the revised...

I'd feel better about the GenCon release if the store release was in mid August instead of early September. Seeing a bunch of leaks for a week leading up to the store release would make me more excited to get the book. Seeing a bunch of leaks for an entire month will make me more excited for a...

Barbarian Likes… Yelling Dislikes… Anger management Complexity: “Hulk smash!” Bard Likes… Guitar riffs Dislikes… Selling out Complexity: Side gig Edit: Put the end of my attempt at humor in a spoiler block so it wouldn't hog anyone's screen.

I can imagine a TTRPG where participants play characters having a philosophical debate about the nature of the world they inhabit. In a round-about way, that game could handle any genre, up to and including non-fiction, because the goal isn't to have characters participate in events. The goal is...

I was hoping an offer to pay for all three products at once, months in advance, would warrant at least a small discount, since money now is better than money later. Either way, not getting that consideration was the least annoying part of this experience.

A Tale of Mild Annoyance After careful consideration, I decided I want to preorder all three revised D&D core rulebooks. Specifically, I want the store-exclusive, alt-cover versions. As it so happens, I moved to my current town just before the pandemic lockdown began, so I wasn't yet familiar...

I don’t have any in-depth design notes to share today. This post is more of a quick progress report. I’m currently doing some editing work on my book. At the moment, I’m reviewing a few hundred short descriptions of major settlements. I’ve included a few examples in the following spoiler block.

Chthonic Tieflings in the Realms Until recently, I wasn’t sure how to best describe the cultures associated with the three tiefling legacies from the revised Player’s Handbook. It was fairly easy to identify cultural traits associated with Abyssal and Infernal legacies. At various times, demons...

As the Mods have noted, this conversation has gotten off topic, so I won't be continuing our debate. My prior posts will have to be my last word on matters unrelated to pre-orders.

If all IP is free for anyone to use, my gamer friends won't buy any games from anyone. Not me. Not WotC. Not anyone. There will be no market for games anymore. If every country followed this model, there would be no intellectual property left for counterfeiters to sell. No one anywhere would be...

I must be misunderstanding your argument, because it sounds to me like you're saying corporations are better at making physical products than individuals, but their ability to own intellectual property is somehow an even bigger barrier of entry for newcomers to the market. So your solution is to...

That's why I prefer the 3e Manual of the Planes to any source describing a single cosmological model. It presents the Great Wheel as one of five possible cosmologies (six if you count the sample cosmology in the "Building Your Own Cosmology" section), plus sidebars with guidance for simplifying...

What’s in a Name, Part II In the previous post, I mentioned a few name-related challenges I have yet to resolve as of this posting. Thankfully, I've already resolved several other name-related challenges. For each of the hundred-plus cultures described in my sourcebook, I include a list of...

Having an infinite amount of something doesn't guarantee there will be copies of anything. There are an infinite number of whole numbers, for example, but only one of them is 1. You can keep randomly selecting whole numbers until the end of time, but every time you pick the number 1, it's the...

Sure, Tesla's version of the Ranger is clunky out of the box, but it really comes into it's own when you add in the options from Tesla's Cauldron of Everything.

I think the last sentence in the above quote is the most important one. If the group doesn't mind when one player's character is in need of constant protection (or is evil, or is comedic relief, or is a thief pilfering from everyone's backpacks, etc.), then it's all good. Conversely, if the...

Your ranger wants to deal bonus damage with a weapon attack? Cast a spell. Your paladin wants to deal bonus damage with a weapon attack? Cast a spell. Your druid wants to magically transform into an animal? No spell required.

Interesting questions. For background, I’m the sort of DM who believes randomness should occur during play, not during character creation. I don’t like randomly generated ability scores or hit points, because they can have an outsized impact on the game, making in-game rolls less dramatic in...

If you'd like to debate players who are upset about not starting with a 16 Intelligence, please reply to one of those players instead replying to me and putting words in my mouth. As it so happens, I'm a DM. The implication that I'm motivated by some sort of player entitlement is misplaced...

Random tangent: I once played a changeling who had a deep-seated moral objection to impersonating others. When the party was planning a heist and realized I wasn't going to use my shape changing abilities to impersonate any number of people they were expecting I would impersonate along the way...