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Well, a typical village in the champion country of England (the area where open-field agriculture was practised) had about 1,000 to 2,000 population and one church.

Hardness, strength, and toughness are three different qualities. Diamonds are hard and strong. What they lack is toughness.

No they aren't, they are known for their hardness. There is a very distinct difference.

You forgot goannas. And stinging nettles forty feet high known to be lethal on contact (Dendrocnide excelsa).

You could get a lot of inspiration from Australian palaeontology. http://www.lostkingdoms.com/facts/index.cfm

My campaign (not that I run it under D&D) is set in a tropical archipelago that is in many ways similar to the East Indies (except lacking a monsoon). Tigers, leopards, saltwater crocodiles, elephants, water buffalo, nilbuck etc. That also means rice paddies instead of wheat and barley fields.

or (d) wildly inconsistent with the background material, or (e) far more grandiose than anything the party will be taking on before about 13th level.

Well, if I were a god, on my holy day my worshippers would be doing stuff for me, not goofing off. I might come across with part of the tithe to give them all a bit of a party at the end, but my holy day is the day they owe me in return for all the nneat stuff I do for them during the year...

The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer is without question the premier compendium of religico-magical practice. No world-designer's bookshelf (or these days hard disk) is complete without a copy. Midwinter is discussed under the general headings of "Expulsion of public evils" and "Fire festivals...

Wierd. In my copy of 3.0, DM Fiat is the ultimate rule. It says so on p9 of the 3.0 DMG, under 'Adjudicating". Also on p11, under "Changing the Rules".

Or Go. I think about half a billion people play Go. In Japan, Korea, and China they have newspapers that report Go games.

The non-linearity of the marginal value of income is crucial to explaining risk-taking behaviour. Unfortunately, risk-averse behaviour is consistent only with a diminishing marginal value of income, and risk-loving behaviour is consistent only with an increasing marginal value of income. Which...

Fair enough. So tell me: suppose a cleric somehow offends his or her god, or his or her alignment changes, so that the cleric loses all class abilities. For whatever reason (perhaps the god has been petty or unfair) the cleric obtains an Atonement from a cleric of a different god and professes...

Tough guy. When my brothers beat on someone it's hard work to keep him alive for quarter of an hour.

Diversion of a warm or cold ocean current (eg. if the Gulf Stream shut down England would soon have a climate like Nova Scotia). Vast forest-fires or a volcanic superplume event elsewhere in the world filling the upper atmosphere with microparticulates. Giant meteor impact elsewhere in the...

I was a D&D player first. And a technocrat by training. Don't ever let anyone tell you that these games interfere with education!

Well, they depict 5th-century Britain as imagined by a 13th-century Frenchman. I'm not sure about landscape history before the 11th Century. Somebody upthread suggested that it didn't change much from Celtic or even pre-Celtic times, and that isn't inconsistent with the work I tried to report...

Well, I run a lot of material that amounts to mysteries, mystery-thrillers, thrillers, and police procedurals, and I gather that my reputation as a GM is that my games are very interesting, but that players really have to think hard. On the other hand, one player once said "The only reason that...

That is a good read. Thanks for pointing it out.

G'day There are a few references in the 3.5 rules to a character buying levels as a cleric of are particular deity, for example banning a cleric who has offended his or her god from buying levels as a cleric of that deity until he or she has Atoned. This hints at the possibility of a character...