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Wargames and RPG-wargame hybrids aren't more popular than RPGs, they're just more expensive and thus more profitable per player.

I agree with this: the need for high, immediate, and constant profits is no good for D&D, or for the Realms or Eberron. Wizards is the only company with the resources to mass-advertise D&D -- to adults, as RPGing, not to teenagers as something else -- and thus attempt to spread the popularity of...

I expect the root reason is that familiars break the dramatic focus on the single character of the mage; it's a burden on prose or RPG storytelling to keep track of the familiar. I quote Ed Greenwood: Selfish, suspicious neutral and evil wizards drawn to the Art in search of power and dominance...

3E goes out of its way to uphold 'consistency', patch loopholes, be 'balanced', etc., all so inexperienced and incompetent (two separate categories) DMs don't inadvertently mess up. For competent DMs, this effort and the design complications it necessitated is a big waste of time. Conversely...

Ed eschewed Earth analogues partly so that players would engage with the details of the setting their characters were in, rather than jumping to conclusions about it. The parts of the Realms grafted on by TSR when the setting was used as a dumping ground tend not to follow that philosophy. The...

I don't have Mysteries of the Moonsea (which is not intended as a regional book), but in Faerûn, wizards with familiars are in the minority, as attested throughout Realmslore. I don't get your point about gems.

The published Moonshaes originated in Doug Niles's novel trilogy, which wasn't originally written for the Realms. Sadly, Doug's Moonshaes overwrote Ed's existing, detailed but unpublished archipelago. The main sources are the six novels, FR2 Moonshae and FA1 Halls of the High King.

Adventures suitable for multiple eras tend to be about what doesn't change between eras, which is by and large the criminal underworld. Disproportionately many of the published short SWRPG adventures are of that kind, as is the mega-adventure Tempest Feud. Because of this, very few of the...

Eytan, how do you pronounce your name?

Deities & Demigods also introduced Sekolah as the god of the sahuagin, seemingly in place of the deviltry given as the basis of their society in the Monster Manual. I too prefer the demon-/devil-worshipping. But then our-world religion is not without such misunderstandings.

Graz'zt is linked to the drow in Greyhawk lore by Eclavdra serving him in Artifact of Evil and Sea of Death.

The Yggsburgh map is semi-implicitly set at the confluence of the Ery and Neen rivers in the World of Greyhawk.

I haven't received my copy, but it's discussed in at least a couple of threads at candlekeep.com.

You do get posters claiming they can write creative material as well as professional authors, but in almost every case it's simply a delusion. If not, I want to see their stuff published. World Builder is evenly cowritten by Gary with Dan Cross, while The Canting Crew and Living Fantasy are all...

Wizards fumbled a lot of potential cross-promotion. It didn't release a single book accompanying the release of Episode III, or the Clone Wars micro-series. Even when Paizo ran the Insider it didn't run a 'This is what the SWRPG is about' article. The Neverwinter Nights tie-in anthology was...

The Order is wealthy and provides pretty much any equipment a Jedi needs. The fact that they don't use armour and big bombs is a matter of the fictional mode of Star Wars and the Jedi philosophy, not that those things aren't available -- for instance, wearing armour doesn't increase your...

That all sounds good, but you don't need to make up a single theoretical standard of 'good design' to do those things, I doubt one could be agreed upon except by a self-selected group, and I don't think it would help.

Module writing is a craft, and there are rules of thumb that can be taught and learned, and talking about those can certainly be worthwhile. But they're only a part of 'good design' -- if that means anything practical -- and I can't see the point of going back and judging modules by how they...

Calling such a book Knights of the Old Republic: Old Republic Era Sourcebook would be fine (though misleading, as it wouldn't be focused on Knights and there are already computer games and comics of that title). No it wouldn't: Lucasfilm owns the copyright of everything produced for Star Wars...

Also why? I buy it and wouldn't use either d20 or RQ for the Hyborian Age. On the other hand, to my recollection every official character sheet is greeted by a bunch of people saying how bad it is.