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Good point. In my campaign the Dead waited in a vast queue, which was advancing slowly enough that one might plausibly maintain that only world-wide use of reincarnation and revivification magic caused anyone to leave it at all. Some people maintained that the Dead were advancing to judgement...

Ecellent points! Well said! With Raise Dead and Resurrection routinely available, and with customs and attitudes formed by their availability, it basically makes no sense that people should think of the premature and temporary death of a ruler or property owner as an occasion on which...

Ideally, yes, or at least sometimes (kingdoms in Europe were more often elective than hereditary). But in practice successions are more normally determined by force. The first King of England to succeed by hereditary right was Henry III, in 1216. From the foundation of the kingdom of the...

Last time I was fooling around with this stuff I provided that the druid spell Reincarnate reincarnated the dead person's soul, clean of memories, in a new conceptus. That made it a very valuable adjunct to assassinations. In my campaign there had previously been a High-Elvish empire, which had...

Do the PCs have gas masks? If not a half dozen tear gas canisters and half a dozen flashbangs coming in through the windows, combined with a ambush with tazers in the hallway ought to get you off to a good start. Then send in sweepers in heavy kevlar and gasmasks, with MP5SD submachine guns...

Check the continuity. I inveiged against an inn costing 272,000 gp, saying that no plausible turnover could amortise it. You leaped in to contradict me quoting a turnover of 4,500 per annum. I pointed out that such a turnover was grossly inadequate to cover expenses, let alone provide a...

Rubbish. In the most peaceful and prosperous times, Mediaeval-era farmland sold for twenty-five to thirty years' rent, implying an interest rate on secure investments of 3.3 to 4% per annum. In disturbed or impoverished times purchase prices were lower, reflecting higher rates of return. A...

I don't doubt it. I just think it is a shame that so much of D&D is designed to support the dungeonhacking paradigm.

Well, I think heroism is defined by undertaking great efforts, paying great costs, facing great risks, and particularly risking or accepting death for the benefit of others. And so I don't think that it is found in its most ideal form in D&D. The D&D 'balanced encounter' is biased three to one...

They were in Three Hearts and Three Lions twenty years before Elric showed his pasty face.

Well, 4,500 gp per year from an investment of 272,000 gp is a gross return of only 1.65% per annum on investment. Now subtract out running expenses. It is a crummy business. Besides, how do you expect it to achieve a room occupancy of 50% when it is charging the equivalent of 2.5 to 62.5...

Here are some price (in pennies, from a time when the common wage of day labour was a penny-farthing (1.25 pennies) per day. Building construction Church, 125’, stonework only 27,000 ” cathedral 500,000+ Cottage, 2 storey– w. material free 480 Hall & chamber, modest 2,880 –labour only...

Okay then. A cathedral is by definition the church in which a bishop has his cathedra, his throne. Now I guess that you are not exactly detailing a feature for a campaign set in mediaeval Europe, but nevertheless that this is in some way analogous. So we are talking about the administrative...

Because fire is the only element destroyed by its 'opposite'. Mix earth and air: they separate themselves spontaneously. Mix fire and water: the water may evaporate, but if so it will codense elsewhere. But the fire will be (at least partially) extinguished.

Amputate more fingers.

Indeed. There was one period in which the Assassins were collecting protection money from the Holy Roman Emperor and the King and Patriarch of Jerusalem (among others), but paying protection to the Templars. Quite a substantial sum, too. In 1173 the Sheikh al-Gebel (it was Rashid el-Din Sinan)...

No. The bottom line is that that was an encounter so tough that that party would almost certainly be defeated if they fought, and that the GM ought to have realised was likely to kill at least a couple of characters.

Five 3rd level characters are a little weaker than 4 fourth. Your 'elite' stats are partly balanced by the orcs' 'elite' stats, and I doubt your gear amounts to the equivalent of a whole level. So you weren't really as tough as a 5th-level party. One of those orcs would have been a fair...

Well, I have never run a typical D&D game, and I'm pretty sure that I don't want to start. Very possibly our taste in RPGs are quite dissimilar, and you will be spectacularly uninterested in what I think makes a good setting. However, you did ask, so here goes. A map of some sort is probably...

Note well! My preceding post is a quote of material that I wrote as a prospectus for a campaign set in AD 1291, and therefore it only notes developments to that time. The extraordinary and scandalous events of the destruction of the Knights Templars, and the fantastic exploits of the...