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The hollow warden ranger gets phantom steed and I was playing around with some neat abuses of that spell, but frankly find steed would be more fitting.

Rangers would be unnecessary in a low magic setting because the only threats to civilization in the wilderness would be mundane or close enough to mundane to kill with a mundane sword.

Unless we're talking about a setting like Dark Sun where there are downsides to casting spells, or Forgotten Realms where the ability to do magic is only bestowed on a select few; that is a question worth asking.

That depends on what is being fought. You don't need magic to kill a human. You might need magic to kill a dragon: I'd say in most D&D games any fighter killing a dragon has some degree of magic, even if it doesn't come from class features.

For me, the notion of a "spell-less ranger" only works in a mundane world. Experts at surviving in the wilderness of magical, fantasy environments are going to learn about the magic of that environment; and do you expect a hardcore survivalist to turn their nose up at a magic trick or two that...

I spend a lot of time on the toilet thinking, as do most professionals in the science fiction and fantasy industries

I like Dark Sun's lore and I can respect the literary genre it belongs in, but I personally don't want to play or DM a game in a "dying world" where nothing can ever get better. And I feel if I did DM a world and decided to change that, add a spark of hope into Dark Sun, that's not "really" Dark...

Art without hyperbole is just industrial design. If we're to consider games as art, we must be able to make grand sweeping statements about it the same way we can literature and cinema. For some reason saying "4e D&D isn't an RPG" is somehow more controversial than "Atlas Shrugged isn't a...

The last original argument about art was made sometime around the death of Voltaire; since then we've basically been saying the same thing.

4e was not a role playing game though. At least advertise what it is; "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining".

4e would've cleaned the naughty word up if it was branded "Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics" or "The Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Combat Game" and they kept 3.5e as a reduced product line.

So to clarify, "Heroes of the Borderlands" includes a limited set of rules compared to the PHB and DMG, and it does not include the emblem focus or war caster feat that would allow a cleric to cast with a shield equipped? Guys, I know I make a lot of jokes about 5e having a Basic vs Advanced...

What prompted me to ask the question is, personally, I'm part Greek and so I was like "Hey does Calimshan have absolutely nothing to do with the historical Ottoman empire, or is it just that the Greek-American conception of the Ottomans is very much out of step with American pop culture's...

I had a conversation with Steven E. Schend on Ed Greenwood's personal discord, where I asked the question "I often hear Calimshan described as 'Fantasy Ottomans', but what is specifically Ottoman about them?" Schend responded with a fascinating reply; it's not that Calimshan is specifically...

The intent is that each of the 5 locations offer different "flavors" of fantasy for DMs to set their stories in. The Moonshaes were selected to be the site of Celtic or Brythonic inspired fantasy with a heaping dose of fairy mythology. If you're inspired by something like Spencer's Fairy Queene...

I'm not prima facie against AI art, but I am against low-effort art. If you've got a disability or a speech impediment, learn how to cultivate your art in another way. Someone born with arms can learn to paint with their feet if they really want to paint, but don't just commission a piece of...

Ironically, after removing half-elves from the PHB, they decided to rename the muls to "half-dwarves".

Eberron is explicitly punk, and a case could be made for Dark Sun, but those settings are "punk" in contrast to the default assumption of D&D which hovers somewhere undefined between Greyhawk, Mystara, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance.

There's barely any punk in the default D&D assumption. The presence of steam does not make punk. Most large organizations like nations or knightly orders are considered to be good and the players are not expected to be from the underclass; we've got "high tech", but not the corresponding "low life."

I live in an imperfect, material world that has somehow seen fit to reward me with a naughty word philosophy degree. I know reality isn't made up of ideas... but D&D proposes a world that is. That's fascinating. I do not know what good is on Earth. In D&D, you can synthesize "pure good" and hold it...