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By the standards of the larger society, yes. But you can still be both Moral and Ethical by Poly standards. For instance, it is moral in a Poly community to take other lovers. It is unethical, however, to ask your lovers to choose between yourself and another lover, or deceive lovers about your...

Morals define what a given society views as acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a broad sense. Ethics defines the acceptable way to do what a society allows as moral. Morals are what is allowed; ethics are the proper way to do it. For example, in the United States it is moral to make a...

Whenever discussions of alignment break out, I try to remember what the alignment seem to actually mean in play. After all, D&D is really just a game about killing things and taking their stuff. The only Alignment difference that matters is why a character kills things and takes their stuff...

In my experience, its not that women dislike being hit on, it's that they dislike being hit on by guys they consider unattractive. A good-looking, in-shape guy in an expensive outfit, driving a pricey car, is generally going to get a positive reaction when he whistles at a girl on the street...

Sorry, but the Shadar-Kai just seem so 90s to me. Gothy look, piercings, tattoos, fetish clothing. All that stuff was cool and edgy 15 years ago. Nowadays middle-class teenage girls from the suburbs have piercings. Everybody and their mother has tattoos. They talk about BDSM on broadcast TV...

Personally, I think 1st edition got the whole minion/mook thing right. Fighters could attack monsters with 1hd or less as many times as the Fighter's level. It perfectly simulated literary/cinematic fights against mooks, gave the fighter an interesting ability that no other class had, and was...

Sure. Use a cone of cold on it, freeze it solid, and swing away. If you've ever seen what a frozen turkey can do in terms of damaging someone, you know a frozen cat would at least be equal to a club.

And Gygax did that on purpose, to simulate all the European folktales where a single knight slays a dragon. Gary never intended Dragons to be the most powerful opponents in the game.

I see your point. Perhaps "justified" is the wrong way of explaining it, since it has connotations of "right". Maybe "understandable" would be better. The point I had in making the humanoids actually be rotten, vile creatures was to: 1. Make the players not feel too bad about slaughtering lots...

Racism is a major theme in my campaign world. The Human nations are unified into a decaying, but still continent-spanning Empire, and Humans are dominant over the other races. Demi-humans, who have largely been relegated to reservation-like "freeholds", are treated as second class citizens...

I tend to do goblins with a high-pitched, sniveling voice, something like Dr. Frankenstein's Igor. Hobgoblins have a harsher, bestial sound, but are articulate. Orcs I also do with a deep, bestial voice, but they are inarticulate, and they use LOTS of obscenities. Dwarves I do with a Germanic...

People to this day report seeing large, panther-like cats roaming the British Isles. Not only are there no large cats native to the area, the cats often vanish or manage to get into places they shouldn't be able to.

Another vote for Castles & Crusades. If your players know ANY edition of D&D it'll be the easiest to explain, and gameplay itself is lightning quick. Of course, I'm personally partial to Rules Cyclopedia D&D also. But I understand that book (in printed form) can run you upwards of $50 nowadays...

I like the Balor picture. It's METAL, which is the most important thing for any D&D art. As for the recent Pit Fiends... Pit Fiends will always have fat bellies in my mind, a la the 1st Edition Monster manual. Makes 'em look like fat-cat fascist generals. But then, WOTC seems to have banned...

What days are WOTC thinking of? I've been playing for 23 years, and I never ran any of those adventures, nor did I ever play in them. I owned them, certainly, but I read them as examples of adventure design. Me, and every DM I knew, homebrewed. That being said, if there was one shared adventure...

A good open setting could be made by simply taking the imaginary lands of myth and legend, and placing them together on a map. Places like Hyperborea, Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Lyonesse, Shamballa, Shangra-La, Agartha, etc. Make the lands exactly as they are depicted in the legends. Instead of...

You're welcome! My work is done!

If I say "Gnome" to the average person, they think a short, heavy-set little person with a big nose and a white beard. That's what Gnomes are, and that's what new players will expect them to be. If you want to create a fantasy race that doesn't look like that, don't call them Gnomes. Above all...

Which is a total shame. The Paladin class was almost entirely based on the Legends of Charlemagne (by way of Three Hearts and Three Lions), including the idea of the Paladin's intelligent warhorse, and his Holy Sword. Irish mythology was especially fond of the idea of the multi-talented hero...

Malagigi from the medieval Legends of Charlemagne is a wizard-knight, and probably the archetypal one for the Western world.