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ASoIaF was riding high on the “plot doesn’t matter, characterization Uber alls” philosophy that was big in the 2000s (which I partially blame for GRRM never writing the ending). A lot of people still like it of course, but now that plot is getting more appreciated again, opinions seemed to have...

The simplified version is that the ancestries result from the ancient protean dream-folk settling into their forms as the world stabilized. That said, magical mutation isn’t an uncommon occurrence, so any species can appear even if it doesn’t have a breeding population.

Mine are not exclusively, or even primarily, hyenas, though they may have been the first animal to become them. Any beast that partakes in demonically tainted meat become gnolls, you really don’t want to mess around with a bear or boar gnoll, for instance. They’re also weirdly accepting of...

Spirits certainly exist in my world, some exceptionally powerful, but there’s no clear dividing line where a spirit counts as a god. What generally known is that the more specific a spirit’s concept of domain, the more comprehensible it tends to be to mortals. So a spirit of a river is someone...

Magical underground folk is still a good enough niche to fill. Were I to use them for a campaign, I’d probably characterize them similar to how the “grey” aliens are often depicted. Mysterious, rarely communicating, not necessarily hostile to humans but if their plans intersect with humanity...

Fantastical and Strongly Themed: these two are linked. When I think of an RPG dungeon, I think not of a natural place but something like a genius loci with its own set of rules. Non-linear: I need room to breathe. One of many locations: you’re fighting the enemy on their own turf now, contrast...

“Get out of here Nebular, no one likes your style.”

I find both the question of what will be submitted and what WotC would accept to both be interesting, so I’ll list some ideas I’d assume people would try and a guess at what their chances are. Quite a few fantasy versions of various historical civilizations. This an obvious one, but I suspect...

A galaxar is a hivemind of angels thinking as one. A universar is a hivemind of galaxars.

Non-deity clerics are not at all new in D&D, and frankly fit the worldbuilding too. The deities by and large aren’t depicted as the ultimate power in the multiverse; for instance, they’re bound by the alignments. Also, the fact that many gods were once mortals implies that they themselves have...

Not quite zero or one, more like 0.5 to hero.

In Curse of Strahd I’m playing Gaius, an arcane domain cleric. He was born in a lonely village covered in a strange fog, which he grew to have a phobia of; and there was always a feeling that he could never really connect with his fellow villagers, like he could look into their eyes and question...

About the PG-13 to R range as the default. Below that I’ll probably need an interesting premise to keep me engaged and above that there has to be a real point to including that sort of content beyond gratuitousness’ sake or “my realisms.”

This is a post on Enworld.

I’m guessing satyrs, harengon, fairies, and owlin all count.

Assuming libertarian free will makes people less interesting, not more. Both for real life people and fantasy folk and entities. Yes, I am more comfortable with my hypothetical child seeing violent imagery earlier than sexual imagery, in fact. Explaining why would probably take this into places...

Many, if not most, alignment arguments are caused by people refusing to acknowledge that the character they’re playing or their favorite character from another property is some flavor of neutral. Ravenloft domains where the Darklord is the direct cause of everything bad are boring, and Van...

Star Wars is an incomprehensible mess of mutually contradictory ideas smooshed together in a way that only highlights their incompatibility. I still love it for some reason, but let’s call a spade a spade. Also, we need to break free of the Galactic Empire era. Currently I haven’t seen anything...

I was thinking about this, though in the context of how primal, divine, arcane, and so on came about that individual spells. The history of magic in Tales of the Final Age is one of the “non-objective” parts of the setting; spellcasters, historians, and spellcasting historians have multiple...

Fiend summoning is widely, but not universally, banned. Sometimes you can get an exemption if there’s a pressing need and a proven containment plan, but that rarely happens. Of course, sometimes people summon a fiend without realizing it until too late, and different places have their own ideas...