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Recently found masterplan Masterplan and so far I'm quite impressed.

Don't know it well enough to have an option, I picked that article of the Plos newsfeed.

It's a general problem with the new wave of online-journals that they don't have enough high quality submissions and therefore are often scraping the bottom of the barrel, both for scientific articles and (apparently) for other contributions. There have been several cases recently where...

I think this is mostly bad news for any stripe of 3rd party support. If distributors are reluctant now to carry 3p support of D&D, what makes anybody think that they will be more likely to carry 3p material for the less known pathfinder? 3p products for D&D survived because a small proportion...

This similarity seems strong when reading them, because all the rules effect are condensed in one region. In play, they actually are quite different, especially the encounter and daily powers. Between the core 5 players in my group, 3 have a daily power that I would call a clear signature move...

Exactly. And Draconian pride is possible, too. Now PCs insulting a golden dragon can expect to be eaten, as they should be.

The Shadar-Kai blurb only provides general cultural stereotypes. They still allow me for relatively large groups of them to have broken off and do whatever I want them too. Based on your backstory for golden dragons, even a single golden dragon not being strictly adhered to the tenets of honor...

While this is a really cool idea, it is also a very specific concept. Thus it limits where I can use golden dragons in my game; the background snippets given in the MM aim to be as open as possible. I think you could use this as a seed for a Dungeon article, though. An unrelated question would...

I would be irritated if the designers realized that unaligned golden dragons allowed better gaming but still decided to leave the alignment at LG for legacy reasons.

What I find interesting when reading the MM2 is that the actual descriptions of Dragon behavior have not changed; gold dragons are still noble and silver dragons (and couatl) still crusade for good. The designers apparently did not change the creatures, they changed the goalposts. They put the...

I am kind of amused by the constant mention of war dogs. I cannot imagine a dog that is trained well enough that it will follow a stranger into a dark alien smelling hole, attack with fiendish intelligence Undeads and Monsters and sacrifice itself for the life of the party. If I GM you would...

Looking at the mean damage is probably not all that useful here. The variance is way to big to have the law of large numbers take over. If I have 8hp and each attack does 1d6 hp, i know that the first hit will not kill me and I can play accordingly. Once i am down to 4, I know that the next...

Would you please stop throwing that term around? this is a friendly discussion, so I don't always use the most technical language. The evolutionary benefit is calculated by the increase in population size due to a behavior. the benefit dogs get from being pets is most easily evaluated by...

OK, let's break this down. Evolutionary fitness depends of viability and fecundity. I define altruistic behavior is an act that has more cost than benefit to an individual. In evolutionary terms, an act that reduces fitness, likely by reducing viability. As we talked about altruistic behavior...

Cute story. However, even by risking life, the dog gave up less than what he received by domestication. (also, to protect someone carrying his genes, so the argument doesn't apply in the first place - this is well described by the selfish gene theory).

I'm continuing this discussion only out of scientific curiosity, I totally agree that the alignment of Dragons in a game should follow the need of the game and not real-world science. I'ld love to see where you are getting this from as it seems to fly in the face of all mathematical models of...

I think I started with the science, albeit as a joke.

It doesn't, because the costs are not symmetric. What we provide for the dog costs us a trifle, but is of enormous benefit for the dog. Hence the dog only needs to be of minuscule benefit to us to break even. Also, every species will develop detrimental traits if they come together with more...

You show me a domesticated animal that is altruistic (ie gives up resources without receiving more resources in return). Especially modern dogs are pretty close to a parasitic species by most standards. And I love them for it.

This may actually be one of the few cases where the two concepts are not contradictory ;)