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I'm gearing up to run a paragon-tier campaign that's been going on since 1st level, way back in June of 2008. I've got a problem that I haven't been able to resolve, despite frank discussions with my players and several different approaches that I've tried. Please give me insights as to your own...

Neither one of my parents approved of roleplaying games (especially D&D), and when I was a teenager, it caused considerable friction in my house. I first started running the old FASA Star Trek game at my place on weekends. I had a campaign set in the late movie era on an Excelsior-class ship...

Yeah, I am kinda irked about it. Please allow me to elaborate. You see, when someone abandons a design concept, even when it's a poor design concept and it's the right thing to do in every way, that makes me think the original concept wasn't considered very carefully. The process of content...

Yeah, and it kinda irks me a bit. I can deal with the absence of core material (and even appreciate it), but it still rubs me the wrong way because Forgotten Realms and Eberron were reworked to make them conform to the core D&D design precepts. Don't get me wrong, it's not a deal-breaker or...

My vote is for the OGL. We got so many flavors of D&D that I'll never run out of 3E and 3.5 products. People got the chance to not only publish specialized niche products, but to push the rules and concepts of RPGs in ways that never quite happened before. It was truly a golden age.

The format for the Dark Sun books doesn't really bother me as much as the D&D product identity issues. Dark Sun is a cool setting, and a big part of that coolness comes from the fact that it deliberately defies many of the conventions of contemporary fantasy. Still, I seem to remember some...

that was my take on it when I read it, we're on the same page there. :) It's an argument that I got tired of quickly. It seems symptomatic of new games/editions that people try to twist the literal wording of something to their advantage, and the phrasing of raise dead was one of the things that...

When 4E came out, several people were complaining about the phrasing of raise dead. In previous versions of the game, disintegrate was really cool because it destroyed the body--thus preventing the villains from using a handy raise dead to get that villain back into the action. Many players felt...

The rules as written say, "a part of the corpse." In my core 4E, default-points-of-light game, I require this to be approximately the size of a hand or so. Picking through bed linens for individual hairs seems a bit strange to me, and while technically by the rules as written, didn't sit well...

"Effectiveness" is subjective, so necessarily it will vary from group to group and from game to game. Still, as a DM, it sorta gets on my nerves. A little bit of powergaming is okay, and even good (it shows that the player is interested in whether or not their character succeeds). Character...

Just food for thought... Soldiers in ancient armies would sometimes kill themselves rather than be taken as slaves by their opponents. If I lived in a typical fantasy setting, I'd certainly consider falling upon my own sword rather than being captured by gnolls or orcs (if fighting to the death...

Virtually every DM I know and respect re-skins constantly and shamelessly. Here's a few brief examples of the fluff I've changed from core D&D to fit my homebrew. • Dragonborn are the result of powerful magic shared by a tribe of lizardfolk. This tribe banded together under their mightiest...

This is something that has always bothered and puzzled me about American culture. I've never thought that my players endorsed real-life home invasions just because their characters murder kobolds and gnolls in their own homes and take their valuables. You'd think that you would not have to...

I used slavery in my very first 4E campaign. Basically, there was a city of Asmodeus-worshippers who extensively practiced it, and most of society accepted it as the harsh reality of a collapsed economy after the fall of Nerath. Even the ruling nobility were considered "slaves" to the infernal...

Here's an idea, one that combines the question of minions and a clue (besides people disappearing) that might "smoke out" the vampire. Let's say your vampire is a reasonably smart critter. People might start noticing that they never attend services at a temple or always have to be home before...

Up until 3E, I was fond of using a simple piece of unlined paper, folded in half (and I even did it in 3E sometimes). My handwriting is very small, and it always seemed like a waste for me to make all those photocopies (that used vast amounts of real estate on the page that I might never need)...

I'd recommend that you take a look at Cleric's Challenge, although it's for 2E. It has a simple story, but it has all the classic D&D tropes: rising monster populations, an important magical MacGuffin, and a short dungeon right around the corner. I've used it as the introductory adventure for...

For what it's worth, I certainly have considered my own death, and I usually have all my characters do it to. After all, what is a more concrete way of telling people what you believe to be important than what you're willing to shuffle off the mortal coil for? I'm a bit opposite of this...

My first 4E campaign went from June 2008 (right when 4E came out) to April of this year. We ended when everyone had just hit 14th level. Paragon tier was slowing things to a crawl--with the high hit point totals of monsters and a plethora of in-play options for characters (particularly immediate...

Very rarely. Ever since 1E, I've made some version of the assassin for 2E and 3E since they were an important character type in my homebrew. In 4E, I made a necromancer base class that my players seem to love, but I'm not sure that I want to devote a lot of time and effort into making new...