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By "too powerful", I mean that they ALL have the ability to speak, use magic, transform into humanoid creatures, and everything in between. In 1E, it wasn't always so simple-some dragons had only a certain percentage chance to speak or be able to use magic. To me, it just seems like if...

23) One plot I have in my Living Greyhawk Gazetteer Addendum has the current ruler of Ull, Bruzharag the Misbegotten being conceived as an instrument of vengeance. Draske, the original Orakhan of Ull, murdered his brother, who he saw as a threat to his power. Big mistake: He earned the...

In considering this, as well as various other aspects of human life in a given setting, people tend to forget the presence of sentient non-human creatures in the setting. Gnomes, depending on what conception of them you use in your game, would be plunging headlong into the advancement of the...

In reading the Lorraine Williams post, I came across this quote... What was this about? Was SKR part of the lawsuit that stamped out this Mythos game? I admit I'm curious, and I'd like to know more. What do most people think of Reynolds, anyway? My other question has to do with the...

I'm not a gamer; I'm a writer. And yet, oddly enough, and despite the fact that most role-playing fiction is pretty bad, in D&D I see a very rich, ready-made mythology just waiting for anyone to flesh it out, to give it depth and characterization. Creating a mythos from scratch is no easy...

*Bursts into tears*

Maybe, but in low magic games, you can also limit the ability of the PCs to blast through your challenges, forcing them to come up with creative solutions and the use of other types of spells. If you, like I would if I gamed, restrict the PCs to PHB races and classes (so no Dragon Shamans, no...

A lot of these strategies can be effective, but many of them rely on magical items and spells. But not every opponent, not even every BBEG, will have access to all the magical resources they might like. Sure, it might be nice to have a wand of lightning bolts or the ability to cast a wall of...

It is because, for all their supposed grace, wisdom and power, the elves have ultimately failed to live up to their potential, forever fractured and divided as a race. In no way, at any time, has the olven race ever lived up to its potential. Its capacity for powerful magic...its ability to...

In one 2E FR adventure called The Four From Cormyr, written by John Terra, the PCs are hired to track down some adventurers who are delinquent in their payments. On the way, they stop for the night in an inn, and one of the guests is a merchant who seems extremely nervous about something. This...

Part of the problem for me with Cunningham is that she created Liriel Baenre, an uber-powerful mage in a setting where being a 16th level wizard means almost nothing. I can tolerate Drizzt because of the shades of grey he puts in the setting, and makes the Realms look grayer than Grubb or...

1) Probably the game side, with the exception of Salvatore, as there are a lot of good ideas in FR that are unfortunately overshadowed by the worst aspects of the setting-Mary Sue NPCs, powerful wizards that are a dime a dozen, poor characterization, easily identifiable black and white villains...

In a thread discussing how the game has changed over various editions, TheAuldGrump mentions how all of his players died trying to swim a raging river except the one with a Swim skill. It suddenly occurred to me that, DM permitting, the player might have used his skill to determine if the river...

My own variations are not so much variations as they are fleshing out and placing more emphasis on subtle cultural traits that may have been in present in canon text, but I'm expanding them and giving them my own personal twist: -Orcs are brutally lawful, militaristic crosses between men and...

You're marked as a criminal for having scars on your arms? And there's no way to avoid it? And you didn't even do anything wrong? I'd get up and leave the table if a DM tried pulling that sort of crap. Besides which, couldn't you just have the scars healed, or just wear long-sleeved...

What spell was that? No way I'd ever allow a spell like that in my game, if I actually ran one, either for PC wizards or my own NPC villains.

Awww, no manure? Ah well, glad to hear it worked out well for you.

Hence the beauty of percentage chances. That way, it's established that not every dragon will have magic or be epic masters of subtlety, while DMs who want to use dragons as ingenius masterminds will still be able to do so. Everyone gets what they want in this case-people who want their...

Maybe, with dragons, we need to borrow a leaf from 1E. In 1E, not every dragon automatically had the ability to assume human form, to cast spells, or to even talk. Every dragon had a percentage chance of being able to talk, or to cast magic. Ever since Dragonlance, that setting's image of...

Frankly, it seems to me that this is the PCs' fault, not yours. If that idiot Barbarian keeps angering everybody they come across with his my-way-or-the-highway attitude, then people are going to stop hiring the PCs or even helping them. If the PCs' "I don't take crap from anyone" attitude...