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If Barbarian isn't the right fit for "guy who gets stronger when angry," then I think the Barbarian class has utterly failed to deliver what it's promising.

I remember reading a comment from someone who was working at WotC when they first released the OGL. To paraphrase, they thought the OGL would create an environment where thousands of developers built upon each on others' contributions. Instead, the OGL created an environment where developers in...

This post is more of a progress report than an in-depth design note. I’ve spent my free time this week doing copy edits of my manuscript. My latest editing pass involved checking to make sure names of Backgrounds and Classes are capitalized (and words like “farmer” aren’t capitalized when not...

Oh, I'm well aware. Back when I was a player during the 3.5 era, I was the wizard who took all the item creation feats so I could deck out the whole party with custom, half-price magic items.

The best (or worst) part about the Crafter feat's 20% discount: If your character takes the feat, you can do all of your party's shopping for them, so no one will pay full price again.

I can't wait to see a revised rules update of the Fairy. I imagine the video preview of the "glowed-up" Fairy will go something like this: Talking guy: "The fantasy of the Fairy is getting to play a Tiny creature, so we've given the Fairy the ability to become Tiny for 10 minutes per Long...

New and Updated Species A few days ago, Wizards of the Coast released an article summarizing the playable Species that appear in the upcoming revised edition of the Player’s Handbook. Since my sourcebook is designed to accommodate any edition of the game, the Species options in the revised...

I'd feel better about the GenCon release if the store release was in mid August instead of early September. Seeing a bunch of leaks for a week leading up to the store release would make me more excited to get the book. Seeing a bunch of leaks for an entire month will make me more excited for a...

Barbarian Likes… Yelling Dislikes… Anger management Complexity: “Hulk smash!” Bard Likes… Guitar riffs Dislikes… Selling out Complexity: Side gig Edit: Put the end of my attempt at humor in a spoiler block so it wouldn't hog anyone's screen.

I can imagine a TTRPG where participants play characters having a philosophical debate about the nature of the world they inhabit. In a round-about way, that game could handle any genre, up to and including non-fiction, because the goal isn't to have characters participate in events. The goal is...

I was hoping an offer to pay for all three products at once, months in advance, would warrant at least a small discount, since money now is better than money later. Either way, not getting that consideration was the least annoying part of this experience.

A Tale of Mild Annoyance After careful consideration, I decided I want to preorder all three revised D&D core rulebooks. Specifically, I want the store-exclusive, alt-cover versions. As it so happens, I moved to my current town just before the pandemic lockdown began, so I wasn't yet familiar...

I don’t have any in-depth design notes to share today. This post is more of a quick progress report. I’m currently doing some editing work on my book. At the moment, I’m reviewing a few hundred short descriptions of major settlements. I’ve included a few examples in the following spoiler block.

Chthonic Tieflings in the Realms Until recently, I wasn’t sure how to best describe the cultures associated with the three tiefling legacies from the revised Player’s Handbook. It was fairly easy to identify cultural traits associated with Abyssal and Infernal legacies. At various times, demons...

As the Mods have noted, this conversation has gotten off topic, so I won't be continuing our debate. My prior posts will have to be my last word on matters unrelated to pre-orders.

If all IP is free for anyone to use, my gamer friends won't buy any games from anyone. Not me. Not WotC. Not anyone. There will be no market for games anymore. If every country followed this model, there would be no intellectual property left for counterfeiters to sell. No one anywhere would be...

I must be misunderstanding your argument, because it sounds to me like you're saying corporations are better at making physical products than individuals, but their ability to own intellectual property is somehow an even bigger barrier of entry for newcomers to the market. So your solution is to...

That's why I prefer the 3e Manual of the Planes to any source describing a single cosmological model. It presents the Great Wheel as one of five possible cosmologies (six if you count the sample cosmology in the "Building Your Own Cosmology" section), plus sidebars with guidance for simplifying...

What’s in a Name, Part II In the previous post, I mentioned a few name-related challenges I have yet to resolve as of this posting. Thankfully, I've already resolved several other name-related challenges. For each of the hundred-plus cultures described in my sourcebook, I include a list of...

Having an infinite amount of something doesn't guarantee there will be copies of anything. There are an infinite number of whole numbers, for example, but only one of them is 1. You can keep randomly selecting whole numbers until the end of time, but every time you pick the number 1, it's the...