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But there are some things you can't fix, even if it is your fault they are broken. Just because it is the GM's responsibility doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything he can possibly do. Bailing the party out with a deus ex machina, or by having a threat suddenly spring a leak and go all...

First sketch the forest, then detail the trees. Details will just cause the readers' eyes to glaze over, they certainly won't remember them, unless you first establish a framework to hold them in their places, to relate them to one another. So write the most important sentence of your...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Someone wasn't paying attention during Sci classes at high school. And any 'best ever' list that has room for the original Battlestar Galactica is too long.

It does. But you make a very good case for it, and on the whole I am impressed. I guess your characters are not shy about expending charges, drinking potions, and casting spells from wands. Especially when they see the end of the financial year rocking around.

1) If options presented to the players are not balanced, then players will tend to choose the powerful options and regret their sacrifice of cool, variety, or novelty. Or they will choose the new, cool otions that increase variety, and regret their sacrifice of power. Regret is not fun. 2) If...

Interesting. I don't see balance issues as applying between the GM and the character-players, or rather, I don't see those as being determined by the rules. In my campaigns, for example,, the balance is determined by how much the character players try to bite off. If it is more than they can...

G'day I just took a quick wander through the Dungeon Master's Guide II. There is some very good material in it, especially in the first chapter and the first part of the second chapter. I can foresee a time when this book is interleaved with the Core DMG, to produce perhaps two books: one an...

G'day Can anybody point me in the direction of write-ups for, or that would do for, the following cleric domains? • Truth • Light • Justice Regards, Agback

The logic of my game world provides that a certain group of elves who live almost entirely on ships, and live by trading, fishing, and whaling should share the religious position of the druids. Unfortunately the druid spell lists are not very useful on a ship at sea. Can anyone point me in the...

I'd like to recommend some books to you Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Roberta MacAvoy's The Grey Horse, Damiano, and Tea with the Black Dragon, Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds, Marion Bradley's Mists of Avalon. All excellent books. All fantasy. No axe-swinging warriors, few spellcasters, precious few...

Well. I sometimes uses as a plot hook a villain who is prepared to do, and in fact preparing to do, who who is in the habit of doing, something absolutely dreadful in order to extend his or her life and youth. Personal survival is ahead even of religious and political fanaticism as a credible...

Let me add to the list. In the final chapter (The Grey Havens), Círdan has a long beard and is 'grey and old'.

That depends. First of all, on how much weight they are strapped to. Second, on whether the lungs are full of air. Third, on how advanced decomposition is. Fourth, on how deep they are. A fairly typical course for a person who has had a lungful of water is to sink until decomposition fills the...

Good point. But if they can just get one little piece of it (and get their cleric's level back within 130 years) they are good for a Resurrection. One possible approach might be to summon a creature that has eaten part of the body, kill it, retrive a scrap of flesh from its gut,, preserve the...

I've done it lots, mostly with the PCs an investigative team in SF police procedurals, but also in some other places. The general trend of my experience is that it only works if: 1) the player of the CO is a good leader, willing to listen to advice and to delegate 2) the other players are team...

I think they started out when the Templars were organising pilgrim ships. Pilgrims would give their money to the Templar guards on the ship for safe-keeping, and the Templars would issue a receipt. It wasn't long before the Templars worked out that it was silly to ship boxes of money to the Holy...

Yeah, but 'rules as written' is not. The way I take it, it would be possible to ask about a spell or PrC in a supplement "Can it do X according to the RAW". 'RAW' doesn't specify which rules it refers to , but it definitely excludes clarifications, sage advices, house rules, DM fiat, Rule Zero...

They have. I often stack up Steeleye Span CDs to background a fantasy gaming session.

That's right. A leader says "I'm going this way, everyone follow me!". A character who coddles around constructing a consensus and says "I'll lead you in whatever direction you want to go" is not a leader but a vainglorious follower.

I have that trouble. Worse, when I am trying to play a low-key character some GMs still have NPCs treat me as though I were an obvious shaker and mover. Just now I have joined a new group, or people who don't know me at all, and who don't know that I am supposed to be this dominating leader...