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Well, you won't have that trouble with Gehennum. Assuming arability and fertility considerably less than those of the (geologically similar) East Indies I estimate its population at ten million in the Archaic Period rising to forty million in the Decadent (400 years later). The largest city in...

There is a considerable element of truth in this. But on the other hand the GM is playing the game as a recreation too, and no-one is paying him or her enough to run a game he or she doesn't enjoy. The Gamemaster is not a servant. Moreover, one of the things that I have learned in my long...

Gehennum is an archipelago about 1,500 km long and up to 400 km wide. There are over 6,000 islands of which 880 are inhabited. The total land surface is about 200,000 square kilometres. That's about two-thirds the area of the Philippines, and rather bigger than mediaeval England. On various...

Yep, it's called "Great Britain" (being the biggest of the British Isles).

That more goes to the question of whether D&D ought to recognise the distinction between agility and manual dexerity. It does however suggest this question: "Ought cutting off a characters' feet and thumbs to affect his or her mental attributes?"

Umm. Is modern neurology the appropriate standard? It is reaching for a physical explanation of mental processes, which in a D&D world are definitely a function of the immaterial soul and not of the all-too-physical nervous system. 'Trap the Soul' doesn't suck out the brain and nerves, so I'm...

Interesting. My experience is rather that nothing shocks players out of the complacent presumption that a fantasy world must be what they are used to like the knowledge that their characters are black, armed with a kopesh and a bow, and naked except for a necklace of tiger's teeth and a smug...

One setting that I think is seriously under-appreciated is the eastern Mediterranean in Classical times, particularly the lands around the Aegean, but also Egypt and Asia Minor. The world as Herodotus desccribed it in the Histories is just screaming to be made into a fantasy RPG setting. Gene...

What the party needs most of all is another meat shield. Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, or Cleric with a suitable domain (eg. War). It would depend on my rolls. With good stat rolls I'd probably go for a paladin or monk. With stats that needed dumping I'd go for a cleric or fighter. I guess...

They were written by a bloke who was at the Australian National University at the time I was there: Tonio Loewald. He wrote ForeSight in about '83 and published it in '86. HindSight was the fantasy supplement, published in 1987. Both were A4-size perfect-bound books: the edition for ForeSight...

Granted. But I choose MacBride because I want an illustrator, not a decorator. It is all very well to have an artist who paints vanilla fantasy if you have a fantasy that looks like vanilla fantasy. If everyone already knows what the things are and how the garments are worn then you pick the...

ForeSight HindSight Still the best general-purpose RPG I have come across. RuneQuest. The only thing for Glorantha.

In answer to the OP: My campaign setting is tropical and pretty warm. Clothing styles are very revealing. Communal bathing is usual, although mixed bathing is usually confined to family and close friends. People go nude as a matter of course when swimming, boating, engaging in athletic...

Good point. I remember reading somewhere that the sleeping garment of which we have the earliest records by at least two centuries is the nightcap.

You seem to be confusing the Nineteenth and early 20th Centuries with the Mediaeval period, as well as over-generalising horribly about a thousand years of history for an area a thousand miles across east-to-west and north-to-south, occupied by scores of different ntional groups.

Like it says in the title of the thread, like it says in the poll question, like it says in the original post: I am interested in the number of your own player character that you remember by name. Not someone else's. Not NPCs. Not ones you can look up in your archives. Your. Player characters...

Angus MacBride. I'd set him up in a studio in Malaysia somewhere, with a large budget for armourers and textile workers to dress his models.

Yeah, well, the context would naturally lead you to that conclusion. And it's not like 'PC' was used to refer to player characters before there were any personal computers, or anything. And who ever reads the first post in a poll thread before answering the poll?

It has always seemed strange to me that so many people seem to identify closely with one particular character. For instance some people take on their characters' names as InterNet handles, and celebrity gamers interviewed about their experiences as a keen gamer say "my character was…", as though...

Because it is widely familiar, and sadly few people have read The Worm Ouroboros, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Roots of the Mountains, or anything by Snorri Sturlinson. There is no point in using a measuring stick that is unfamiliar to most of your intended audience.