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Except that I didn't change the Y of the continual flame spell. If X is the player choice to utilize an in-game effect, then Y is the in-game effect determined by the rules. If a player casts continual flame under my interpretation, then it will not run out on them within the context of the game...

First off, there is no singular D&D setting. Whenever someone creates a setting or campaign for D&D, they interpret the basic rules and ideas of D&D in different ways. Look at Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and Dark Sun for example: all three of those official settings take the same basic rules and...

Okay, here is some of my embarrassing stuff: 1) I have never watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and most references to it go over my head. 2) Heck, 90% of geek pop-culture references go over my head. I know videogames and anime and that's about it. 3) I haven't had a consistent D&D game...

Hussar, look, I have never been talking about baseline D&D assumptions and how they affect everyones campaigns. I have never been saying that you can't have a setting full of continual light spells if you really want to. I have just been saying that if someone doesn't want those things in their...

I was talking about access to medieval universities. I could cite comparisons to ancient/medieval Chinese education too, since it followed the same patterns: only the wealthy elite had access to any kind of advanced education, and only a fraction of them succeeded at it. Anyways, once again I...

The use of the term permanent is a little open to discussion. For the most part, any given D&D campaign only covers a finite period of time, usually a few decades at the outside limit. The duration of 20 years, a hundred years, and forever are effectively the same thing as far the rules are...

In my book, the only adventurers likely to exist are the PCs, who only exist because of the peculiar circumstances that drive the campaign. NPCs rarely get over 4th or 5th level (in 4E terms). There might be only a few dozen level 10+ NPCs in the entire setting (depending on the needs of the...

Of course a small band of mid to high level adventurers can compromise a castle. A band of mid to high level adventurers can topple entire kingdoms or save them from destruction according to their whims. Adventurers can invade the well-defended underground lair of a thousand year old lich and...

I like 4E's decision to make Fighters not only be on par strength-wise with Wizards, but have similarly cool powers to boot.

All it takes is a catapult with a flaming projectile to get fire over a castle's walls, so fire raining down from above is something that medieval castle design already had to take into account. I agree that if flying troops were introduced to be a common and widespread part of military combat...

I steal inspiration liberally from videogames, books, movies, anime, mythology, history, my brother's good ideas, my old DMs' good ideas, and story hours I like. I would admit to it shamelessly if anyone asked and go over it in detail, but I doubt any one piece would be recognizable after going...

Heracles is a bit of a tricky case to figure out. On one hand, many of the monsters he is famous for defeating are used as common D&D monsters. On the other hand, he performed some truly incredible feats of strength. In order to get the golden apples, he made a bargain with the Titan Atlas, in...

Honestly Wolf1066, that logic reflects a pretty naive understanding of how technology changed the world. Nothing you described would have any use or significant impact on a society, let alone be enough to trigger an magic-industrial revolution. The problems with your arguments are the same as...

I think it is a lot easier than it appears at first. You just need magic to obey a couple of central tenets. First: magic can't produce energy out of nothing. If magic requires some kind of finite or limited source of power to draw upon, even if it is as simple as the inherent magical energy of...

That depends. If by "alternatives to coal or oil", you are referring to magic, then the ability of magic to act as a substitute for fossil fuels is highly dependent on how magic works and what it can do. Since the how and why of magic is controlled by the person who nixed coal and oil in the...

I would say that there is a potential pitfall in writing too much. I have fallen into it myself a few times. The biggest problem lies in writing material that interferes with your ability to come up with what you need to come up with in order to actually run a campaign. For example, i once came...

The truth is that the distinction between truly powerful mortals and gods can be somewhat vague in non-monotheistic religions. Confusing the issue is that there are many grey areas between mortal human and god, such as demi-gods and mortal incarnations of gods. More than anything else though...

It is possible to model a wide range of humans using the natural range of variation in stats that arises from rolling 3d6. Because of how the stat system works, while dwarves are stronger than humans on average, and it is possible for a dwarf to be stronger than any human can be, it is also true...

For 4E, I would have only a few dozen, or maybe a few hundred Paragon Tier characters at any one time (depending on setting size). Epic Tier characters probably only show up on average once every few centuries. Everyone else would be distributed in the Heroic Tier, heavily skewed towards the...

Okay, there is a lot of stuff in your post that I don't want to touch with a ten foot pole, but I have to refute the idea that introducing guns would mandate some kind of general technological progression. Technological progress is not some straight line path where someone needs to take steps...