Search results

Straight from Richard Baker himself, only a couple of weeks ago: https://richardbakerauthor.com/2024/03/10/50-years-of-dd-the-sorcerer/

The 3E sorcerer exists in large part to justify spending all that PHB space on the massive wizard spell list, so I'm afraid that was a non-starter from the beginning.

Sadly true, and I've known it for years. But sometimes I still miss the SAGA Rules System, although I believe Tab Creations has done retroclones of it for some games and is working on a standalone revision.

But if you read Gygax's articles on the AD&D project from the early Dragons, he considered it a bug, not a feature.

The ownership (by which I mean WotC), the pressure of online agitators, and the general bent of the designers and online fanbase.

Raphael is one of the three angels canonically named in Scripture and venerated by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. (He's in the book of Tobit, which many other Christians and Jews reject as non-canonical. Said book is also where you find Asmodeus.)

Wait ... they actually named a devil Raphael? That's rather tone-deaf and mildly offensive, but I suppose I'm not too surprised, especially since it appears to have come out of Baldur's Gate III.

There have been multiple interpretations of Skeletor across the years, some (the original minicomics, the live-action movie, the 2002 relaunch) considerably more competent and imposing than the Filmation version. (And at least one--the 1990 New Adventures cartoon--who is arguably less so.) I...

If Vecna were Skeletor, it would have gone the other way around--Skeletor's using Orcus' wand with the head replaced with Orcus' own. :D

I think 'souls are trapped in Ravenloft' is a bit of fanon like the original 'people are created by the Dark Powers'--the official material never states anything, but it becomes common as fans overthink things. :) I did a careful read-through of the Black Box about a decade ago, and while it...

Has anyone asked Tracy Hickman about this? The 'soulless/trapped souls' elements came in with Curse of Strahd, which he consulted on, and it resembles some of his ideas from Dragonlance's War of Souls.

I'm one of the small handful that actually likes the original Fifth Age, but the War of Souls retcons and post-WoS era don't work for me on the whole.

Yes, that's what I had in mind with the 'limited in what it could control and effect' clause. Unfortunately, not all authors picked up on that nuance even before the changeover, so we get a 5A sorcerer using a sleep spell in the "Raid on the Academy of Sorcery" short story. :(

The resemblance between Fifth Age sorcerers and 3E+ D&D sorcerers is primarily in the name. 5A sorcery was still a learned and intellectually-based (Reason, under the SAGA rules) ability, limited in what it could control and effect, but capable of being shaped in the casting within the schools...

You forgot his time in Ravenloft: 1997 (introduced in Domains of Dread, his first appearance since WG4 Vecna Lives!) to 1998 (headliner of Vecna Reborn, the last full-length Ravenloft adventure produced).

They might pull in Raistlin for DL ... but if so, I predict much unhappiness in certain quarters.

The transition from 1st to 2nd Edition was handled dramatically differently than WotC's typical "burn the previous editions before an idol of Gygax Mearls Tiamat Asmodeus and let them never be spoken of until years have passed and we need to play up the nostalgia." Magazine support continued for...

Distinguo: DiTillio did a lot of good episodes for He-Man, but it's reaching to call him the "mastermind." He has a much stronger claim on She-Ra, where he wrote four-fifths of the opening serial and many other episodes. Interestingly, it was his gaming work that brought him to the attention...

"We are the Realms. We will add your biological and mechanical distinctiveness to our own. Your setting will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Depends on whether WotC's secret master decides to pull the rug out from under them or start demanding more explicit shows of fealty. We'll see how front and center Asmodeus is in 5.?E. :)