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Frankly, there's half-a-dozen Guy Gavriel Kay books you could pull out of a hat and, depending on your taste and sensibilities, enjoy equally as well as Under Heaven. All of Kay's works take place in the same basic fictional continuity, separated by time and geography and culture, with the...

Yeah, not all fiction will be to everyone's taste, but a quick perusal of the Amazon and Goodreads ratings gives me a pretty decent leg to stand on that most fantasy fans will find much to enjoy. While from a certain point of view, I can maybe see the "Gary Stu" complaint, from another...

Beyond Tolkien, the most radical changes to my views of fantasy fiction have come from authors Anthony Ryan and Guy Gavriel Kay. If I could somehow magically convince every user of this website to read Blood Song by Anthony Ryan and Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay, I would consider my life's...

I've quoted Tommy Boy in multiple work meetings over the last 2 or 3 years, and invariably anyone under the age of 40 has just sat there with a polite smile and a blank stare. And if they were younger than 25, the name "Chris Farley" was meaningless, they'd never even heard of the guy. Richard...

Picked up Ironsworn: Sundered Isles PDFs from DriveThruRPG last week. I don't know exactly what I was expecting; I sort of just buy everything for Ironsworn these days because Ironsworn is awesome, even if I'm not necessarily planning on using it right away. :) But man, I was blown away with...

If PBTA style is okay, there's a neat Forged in the Dark take on D&D-style fantasy called Grimwild that was released just a few weeks ago. You can get the main player-facing content for free on DriveThruRPG. There's a $20 PDF for GMs that adds an additional chapter of content for running the...

Voted for, "We will be playing another game and will not be using D&D or any of its variations." The probability of me playing anything even in the same REALM as D&D (class/level based, d20 core resolution, skill proficiency scaled leveling) is very low. There's a small chance another GM might...

Okay, first session report --- We just barely got through character creation and some of the initial Great House (re: "Crew") setup. Still more setup to go, now that I've organized everything into usable digital formats (see more below), but we did start some basic Info Gathering, leading into...

Sending a Bat Signal out to @Manbearcat if he's so inclined to weigh in as well. (Forgive me, good sir, for intruding.)

Tremendous thanks, @RenleyRenfield , this is a gold mine of good info!

So Innerdude finally gets to try a Forged in the Dark game for the very first time with his group (HOORAY! AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING! 🎉🎉🎉🥳🥳🥳). I've got a Court of Blades campaign starting up this Thursday and I'm incredibly excited to try it out. But I have a few questions after absorbing...

True, but Savage Worlds also gives fairly good guidance for developing custom character traits that fall in line with the standard PC build costs. Creating a custom heritage/character trait set is relatively easy because SW is so hackable. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a werewolf, or...

Well, I mean, that's kind of precisely my point. Literally everything a GM does is fudging/illusionism. Why even categorize it as "fudging" in the first place? It's literally just the act of GM-ing, full stop. Fictional stuff the GM made up anywhere from 1 to 2,600 weeks ago gets magically...

So this whole thread goes back to a concept I floated in a thread maybe a year and a half ago of "Principled Illusionism." The concept of "fudging" only really exists if you accept two key premises: The GM is the final arbiter and authority of all happenings in the game, regardless of any...

Oh, and I also forgot --- This is the first playthrough I've ever used Mazzy in my party. Oh my gosh, what was I thinking all those years ago??? Mazzy is AMAZING! Once you get her the Gesen Bow (unlimited, electrified arrows) and the bracers of archery, she's flat out INSANE.

Couple more thoughts while I'm thinking of it ---- The "5-minute workday" effect is soooooo much a thing here. One of the things that interested me is just how much of BG / AD&D 2's enforced pacing is tied directly to HP + spell availability. By boosting my two "core" PCs' hit points way up...

Well it's actually fairly hilarious in Baldur's Gate, because you typically select your class BEFORE you roll your stats. And depending on what class you select, you can actually get a mandatory "boost" to the stats. For example, if you select Paladin as your class, the game guarantees that...

I don't know what possessed me, but four weeks ago on a total whim I re-downloaded Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Enhanced Editions from GOG. I'm pretty sure at this point in my life I've bought both of those games at least 3 times now---the original CD-ROM versions (BG1 in '98, BG2 in '00), the GOG.com...

** Stands in corner with a pained grimace, but takes the high road and says nothing. ** :p