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Blackmoor was established to be in the ancient history of Mystara. I'm pretty sure it's a retcon, but they did establish they are in the same world, just with Blackmoor happening long before all the later Mystara stuff.

Scimitar has a better critical threat range (18-20) instead of the 19-20 critical threat range of a longsword. If you're optimizing for better critical hits, like the Improved Critical feat and the Keen enchantment, that can become a pretty clear advantage. Morningstar does bludgeoning AND...

That was about ruling they could fall under common carrier provisions. They can still mandate the policies if 1. The FCC commissioners vote to change their policy. 2. Congress explicitly gives them that authority. One way or the other, expanding internet to rural areas will take legislative...

It would provide a nice pretext for expanding broadband infrastructure to rural areas, which has already been an issue in rural America. ISP's have long been reluctant to run the cables (either fiber optic or coaxial) to rural areas for broadband, leaving them stuck with either dial up, DSL, or...

I think LotR was only a minor influence to Gygax himself. . .Gygax seemed as much or more influenced by Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock than by J.R.R. Tolkien. . . .but Tolkien was more popular and influential than the rest of those authors...

Before the prequels were made, Lucas prohibited Star Wars authors from exploring Palpatine's origins or backstory, other than to say vaguely he was a prominent Senator of the old Republic that maneuvered his way to absolute power. His identity as a Sith wasn't explored until the Prequels...

3e was infinitely more balanced than 2e. 2e didn't even have the concept of balance. It literally didn't even TRY to balance anything. There was absolutely no balance in 2e, because nobody tried to balance anything. You had races that were far superior to others, mechanically, that the only...

Don't be afraid to say this class or this race doesn't exist in Dark Sun. No gnomes, no dragonborn, no warlocks, no sorcerers, etc. Part of Dark Sun is that it's D&D, but it's gone pretty far from the core rules, and wasn't afraid to say those things just didn't exist in that world. This idea...

Yes we can, and yes we do. 2e was little more than a slightly cleaned up, streamlined version of 1e, it was the same basic game with just some relatively minor changes. It was substantially mechanically compatible and built on the same general ideas. You could use most 1e supplements and...

In my years of playing AD&D 2e, I only knew of ONE group that even played it close to RAW. Every other group had to house-rule it extensively to make it even vaguely playable. It had WAY too many arbitrary, silly, nonsensical restrictions (why can't elves be druids, why can there only be one...

It was a rule that, like a lot of odd ones from AD&D, nobody seemed to miss when it was gone. It was rooted in the idea that elves didn't have souls the same way humans (or most other demihumans) did. . .but that concept wasn't followed through in any other way elsewhere in D&D. If elves were...

2e needed a boatload of houserules to be playable. 3e could benefit from a few houserules or being prudent with what supplements you allow. It was far, far more playable with the RAW than any prior edition.

On rare occasion I think of them with a vague bit of nostalgia (they crossed my mind just the other day), but ultimately I don't miss them. Thief skill percentages were just another inconsistency in AD&D. They're on the long list of reasons I'd never go back to 2e. If you want to climb a...

I'm mildly curious about which article this was and when it was written. Saying gods need worship to gain power was one of the things that changed in 2nd edition Forgotten Realms via the Time of Troubles, in-universe it was one of Ao's changes to make gods more responsive to their worshippers...

I played it, I ran campaigns in it, I liked it a lot. I'm pretty sure I have every book officially published for it, and a few of the better 3rd party OGL offerings made for it. I ran a year-long Dark*Matter campaign with it. It did have things I didn't like so much. . .the nonlethal/subdual...

I'm fortunate enough to have a job, in this era of pandemic, that lets me work from home. I'm in the roughly 1/3 of the workforce that is now doing so. It's a white-collar office job in a State Government bureaucracy. For years I'd said our job could be done by telecommuting, that there was...

I'd point out that, thanks to the Open Gaming License, for almost the last 20 years virtually anyone can create a campaign setting for D&D and publish it. If there was a demand for it, you'd think people would be making it. If someone is really that upset about a lack of African-themed D&D...

A place I've drawn inspiration for in DM'ing would be Mammoth Cave National Park. The largest cave complex in the world. Huge caverns, many passages and tunnels. On the various tours, they point out sites where, historically, fugitive slaves were known to hide, or illicit underground schools...

I don't see how the race/ethnicity of the author is in any way relevant. Forced political correctness is abhorrent, and trying claim that a "white Euro-American" as you describe it can't write an Asian-themed setting is laughably absurd.

Yes. Just like the real world has Asia as a whole different continent. You don't need to go off and put something in a whole different world for it to be a different setting. You don't need an entire separate pseudo-Asian "World" just for there to be a separate D&D setting for it. Part of...