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I don't want anything put in just to fill a box. If they come up with a compelling concept for such a species, by all means include it. If not, not.

So, 1.5M for 1E, 1M for 2E, ~1M for 3E, far below 1M for 4E, and 3M and counting for 5E? Those are some eye-opening figures. I had not realized the 1E boom was so gigantic relative to the editions that followed -- I thought surely 3E must have outsold it eventually. But 3E seems to have barely...

In an infinite universe containing infinite matter, everything that appears once can be expected to appear an infinite number of times. But we do not live in such a universe. There are various cosmological theories (e.g., eternal inflation) which propose a multiverse, which would be infinite...

There's really no such thing as a "basic proof of existence" for aliens. Every time we encounter some unknown astronomical phenomenon, somebody wonders if it might be aliens -- from pulsars that look like artificial radio transmissions, to a star suddenly dimming in a way that suggests a Dyson...

It is true that "most folks" agree with this. It's not because of basic reasoning, though; it's an argument from incredulity. Look at the size of the universe, the probability of intelligent life arising can't possibly be so low that all those stars and planets are devoid of intelligence...

And saying "Aliens must exist somewhere!" is like concluding the Loch Ness Monster does exist, after the same amount of investigation. If there were a "We don't know and it's absurd to make any kind of definitive claim" option, I'd have picked that. But if I have to make the absurd choice and...

It could well be that intelligence is merely a bootstrapping process, necessary for life to leap from a planetary surface to the stars, but worthless -- indeed, an active hindrance to survival and growth -- once a certain level of technology is achieved. Perhaps the end state of a technological...

With our sample size of one, we know far too little to assert anything with confidence. We don't know how likely it is that life arises on a given planet, or makes the countless evolutionary innovations needed for sapience, within the limited period during which that planet is habitable. (Earth...

If the Oort Cloud had been teeming with VN probes for (presumably) a couple million years, we would know because they would long ago have expanded into the inner Solar System. We would see them swarming in the asteroid belt, the rings of Saturn, in orbit around Earth itself. The whole point of...

The point of the Fermi paradox is that the amount of searching we've already done should be more than enough. If there were significant numbers of intelligent aliens capable of interstellar travel, and just one of them were inclined to expand and colonize, that species would have filled up the...

I am under no illusions that WotC is paying attention to this discussion, but I've been wanting to try this for a while, so here's a take on what hybrid classes in 5E could look like. (I'm basing this off the standard 5E fighter and wizard, since the 1D&D versions are still in flux.) HYBRID...

For my money, 4E was on the right track for multiclassing, the implementation just needed polish. Feats for those who want to dabble in another class. Hybrid classes for those who want to truly meld two classes. I played a hybrid wizard/warlord and had a great time. Obviously, this is easier...

The game punishes that. Rolling for stats means you get a chance to escape that punishment; you also get a chance to be screwed even harder. On net, you come out roughly the same. If a class suffers from MAD and you're looking to fix it, there are several straightforward, sensible ways to...

5 minutes, but capped at 2/day. (I would not mind 5 minutes with no cap, but that would require a lot of rebalancing. The 2/day limit makes it work as a drop-in replacement for the current rule, which my table has been using for years.)

I can't speak for any other nerds, but the reason I turned on him was the atrocious dialogue and acting. (The excessive reliance on primitive CGI didn't help either.) The plot and vision of the prequels were fantastic. If Lucas had just had the sense to recognize his own limitations and hire a...

I gather there were quite a few people who did that while Tolkien was still alive. In the revised edition, he devoted a chunk of the foreword to knocking down claims that it was an allegory for World War 2, with the Ring symbolizing nuclear weapons. And I'm sure that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Tolkien had a good deal to say on that subject. The funny thing is that the Lord of the Rings really does have a lot going on under the surface, deliberately put there and carefully thought out by the author (who was after all an academic himself). But none of it lends itself to hot takes on...

Bias is inevitable in both kinds of sources. But bias is not the only source of inaccuracy. Another is that human memory absolutely sucks, and it sucks in direct proportion to the passage of time since the event. Contemporaneous sources are far less affected by that type of inaccuracy, and are...

Didn't we already have more or less this exact plot in "Out of the Abyss?"

It's true that you can't pare a caster class down to the simplicity of a champion fighter... but you certainly can pare it down to the simplicity of a warlock. That's one of several reasons I hope they update 2014 Pact Magic instead of going with the mess they replaced it with in the previous...