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I'm not saying that it's unreasonable to have underground locations with believable backstories. I'm asking whether that's necessary for the game. Take the mirror chamber in Conan the Destroyer: If the party stumbles across that thing in an abandoned ruin, do you the GM need to know who...

I'm pretty sure it's a forum.

I guess that's the trick. Even "a wizard did it" or "chaos magic" is a sort of explanation. If you present that to your players as an actual explanation rather than a handwave, it still works to suspend disbelief.

I appreciate a well-thought-out explanation as much as the next gamer. The dungeon was built by such-and-such a person for concrete reasons, and its inhabitants have a reason to live there. That's satisfying worldbuilding. However, I think that phrases like "chaos magic" and "a wizard did it"...

Digging the concept of Half-town. You always think about the hobbits needing boosties to reach the stools at the Prancing Pony, but asking humans to sit on the "short chair" works just as well.

Dwarf tossing! Of course! It's silly, but that is indeed something that only the li'l guys get.

I feel like this might be the right answer. I tried to cling to NearbyGamers.com, but the Web 1.0 interface isn't exactly appealing. I just like that it's purpose-built, you know?

I love this a lot. Nothing more embarrassing than losing a wrestling match to a squirrel.

I feel like this is the common one, and it works well. I just ran a Starfinder module where air duct + small creature was baked into the adventure too. It makes me wonder what other situations could work. Maybe undersized hands are the only ones that can reach the complicated lock...

Part of the appeal of playing gnomes and halflings lies in feeling like the world is too big for you. When all of your enemies are larger than life, it becomes that much more heroic when you go toe-to-toe with 'em anyway. In practice, however, I think that tends to get lost at the tabletop...

Any particular ones to recommend?

Since moving to a new city and writing that blog post, most of my games have become Roll20 games with old friends. I managed to build a group out of my wife's coworkers and my classmates, but two quit with the new semester (gotta loves grad student time constraints) and another two moved out of...

How do the kids manage it these days? Am I supposed to make friends first and then convert them to gaming, or should I find gamers and make friends with them? Is nearbygamers.com still a thing? What about meetup? Am I better off poking my nose into a friendly local game store and sitting down...

Oh man... I would seriously love to see a transcript of that discussion. The differences between actual play and at-the-table D&D is a major interest for me, and hearing how other GMs describe it would be fascinating. Any chance you could be convinced to write out that part of your intro speech?

You specifically address the Matt Mercer thing? Why is that? Have you had it come up before?

I should clarify: this is more or less where I come down. Nothing but respect for Mercer. The problem for me is that, because D&D has been a micro-cultural thing for most of its history -- just you and your buddies figuring out what the game is like together -- having this iconic example of...

Slightly longer write-up on the comic, but here's the gist: Lately, I’ve begun to see a disturbing litany of complaints on the boards. My GM won’t give me my bardic inspiration dice because I didn’t make up a song like Scanlan. One of my fellow PCs is ripping off the Tyberius Stormwind voice...

As an interesting point of comparison, I've heard that the drow of Menzoberranzan were partially based off of decadent Rome. I believe that the show "I, Claudius" was mentioned in the article... Can't remember if it's Salvatore or Rosewater in the interview though.

Loving The Hound as a go-to example. I especially like that he's got some loyalty to a House Lannister built into his character. I think that sort of metaphorical leash is useful with the archetype, even if it doesn't feel very Chaotic conceptually. Cheers!

Is there a similar list of chaotic evil protagonists? I'm wracking my brain to think of any that would actually work as PCs without going in for the obnoxious wanton destruction thing.