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IMO one reason a lot of adventures are written the way they are is because they're "GM proofing" the story to a certain degree. There's an expectation of a dramatic story and often a "zero to hero" narrative but many GMs aren't up to providing that. So adventure writers try to provide that. As...

I don't necessarily agree that modules are short one shots. Keep on the Borderlands and many other modules from that era are really mini campaign settings. One could have several sessions working through one of those. Still, I'm really put off by 400 page hardcovers. I do wish the 5Eized...

As you said elsewhere, the term "domesticated" is being used very broadly. "Tamed" is a much broader word and I think that applies to the kinds of uses that would happen with most fantasy critters. I think a lot of how you view this could depend on campaign themes. For example, if your...

That Erol Otus cover of Eclavdra and a hapless adventurer is hands down my favorite by him. I really, really love his style more broadly but that picture is just out of this world.

That Erol Otus cover of Eclavdra and a hapless adventurer is hands down my favorite by him. I really, really love his style more broadly but that picture is just out of this world.

That Erol Otus cover of Eclavdra and a hapless adventurer is hands down my favorite by him. I really, really love his style more broadly but that picture is just out of this world.

That Erol Otus cover of Eclavdra and a hapless adventurer is hands down my favorite by him. I really, really love his style more broadly but that picture is just out of this world.

Thank you, I was trying to remember where I'd seen that name!

Thank you, I was trying to remember where I'd seen that name!

From what I understand, there really aren't that many species we've domesticated, but lots more can be tamed. Elephants, for instance, are tamed, but not domesticated. Ditto most apex predators like bears, lions, etc. There are numerous examples of plants that seem like they should be...

Tolkien was very strongly influenced by the pollution of the countryside that came along with industrialization and also by the devastation of the landscape he saw during the Battle of the Somme, so that makes a lot of sense.

A good one might be that fire beetles glow because of something they eat in dungeons, but that itself doesn't grow where dungeon air ain't foul enough. It might be cool to play with the idea of alchemists trying to breed them, though. Certainly. They were trying to mimic the kind of craziness...

They weren't level limited as Thieves, hence the 1E joke: Q. "Where are all the elven thieves?" A. "All around you." ;) In my own campaign world, due to world events from a long time before the campaign timeline, the "fae races" fertility (this included dwarves, gnomes, elves, and some...

I did find the relevant table in the 1E DMG (it's on pp. 12-13) and you're right, some of the Venerable ages do go that high. However, if the grognards are attacking WotC for it, they're attacking the wrong target (typical...) because those changes were well underway in 2E. Max age was about...

Yeah, some of the "no spellcaster ever allows anyone else to look at their spellbooks" were pretty clearly done to prevent the obvious sharing of spellbooks among party members. 5E has a few similar with the "nobody ever sells magic items". I think it's much more of an art than a science, and it...

They didn't live thousands of years in AD&D, but more like a few centuries, and it didn't consistently say they had only one or two children. That's lifted from Tolkien, where elves really really are going extinct! AD&D elves were decidedly less alien. Regardless, D&D has really never pretended...

An alternative is that magic itself works according to laws, but possibly highly uncertain ones. Lyndon Hardy, who is a physicist, explored this in his fantasy novels, the first of which is Master of the Five Magics.

It depends. I know from having GMed some of the LotR games that the general emptiness of the world can be kind of a drag. It seems like there's a ton of detail in Middle Earth but there really isn't and the world itself makes little sense, particularly The Shire (e.g., who do they trade with?)...

I think that's true to some degree, but a lot depends on the nature of the fantastical. For example, one could posit that it's essentially "forces of chaos" that hold those up, and that when brought into the "domain of law/civilization" much of that stops working. The fire beetle abdomen ceases...

I stole quite a bit from Scarred Lands for my own campaign world, although I didn't actually run Scarred Lands per se. I should also note that there are advanced human societies where stasis was enforced by government policy: China went through such a period when one of the Ming Emperors set...