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The regenerating troll in D&D derives from Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953). A possible source for the regeneration aspect of Anderson’s troll can be found in Thomas Bulfinch’s Legends of Charlemagne (1863). In the chapters about Ogier the Dane, Bruhier the Sultan of Arabia...

You're absolutely right from a what-makes-sense-in-the-game-world perspective. I think there's a couple of perspectives where a lopsided approach - PCs never take prisoners but can be captured themselves - does make sense: 1) Genre convention. The protagonists in adventure fiction are very...

The superhero rpg Mutants & Masterminds gives the GM explicit permission to declare the PCs defeated/captured. They receive a hero point, which can be used for later benefits, as compensation. Getting captured is very in genre for comic book superheroes.

Yes, I think so. They may fear a period of extended GM narration of their characters' suffering, perhaps involving humiliation, enslavement or torture, with little or no opportunity to do anything about it. Also many players seem to have a conception of their characters as proud and honourable...

1e AD&D DMG pg 111: Experienced players without existing characters should generally be brought into the campaign at a level roughly equal to the average of that of the other player characters. If the average is 4th level, for example, an "average" die or d4 + 1 can be rolled to find a level...

Scouting wasn't particularly viable in this game for two reasons: 1) Knowledge checks were made against hit dice in 3.5 and our foes, mostly taken from MM3, had loads of them. Frex the MM3 charnel hound, which we encountered at level 7 iirc, has 21 hit dice and so requires a DC 31 Religion...

In one of our 3.5e games it only became possible for the whole party to escape once my wizard PC learned dimension door. The cleric had a movement rate of 20ft in his plate armour while the giant monsters we typically faced had 30ft or higher.

I've played in the games of several good GMs who didn't seem to do any written prep. Al's a great improv GM. His sessions are created in his head five minutes before play starts. Some GMs are better with less prep, though I'm not one of them. Perhaps it helps them to be more spontaneous and...

This isn't necessary. I know two very good GMs, Al and Chris, whose games are informed primarily by, respectively, action (especially martial arts) and B-movies. Al is great at describing action scenes. Chris does a good job portraying the criminal underworld; cynical, selfish NPCs; and shocking...

If you're finding you need to divide up your 6 mile hexes because you need a finer scale then why not use 2 mile hexes?

3.5 DMG: METAGAME THINKING “I figure there’ll be a lever on the other side of the pit that deactivates the trap,” a player says to the others, “because the DM would never create a trap that we couldn’t deactivate somehow.” That’s an example of metagame thinking. Any time the players base their...

Appendix N in the 1e DMG is both. It's an incomplete list of the works that inspired D&D and a recommended reading list for DMs. 1e DMG: "The following authors were of particular inspiration to me... From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay you will...

Impressed by the chutzpah of someone who, in a thread about making D&D more inclusive, and marked positive comments only, decides that this is the perfect moment to defend homophobia.

Lovecraft's cosmic horror goes further than the notion of an uncaring universe. It is alien and unknowable. Engaging in the futile effort to understand it "stuns the brain" or drives us insane. The Colour Out of Space: This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and...

D&D has been too mainstream to be that for almost its entire history. At least as far back as 1e, content has been modified to avoid giving offence: 1) In a recent interview Tim Kask said the choices for Appendix N in the 1e DMG were partly influenced by concerns over what parents might find...

Down my way there are a lot of veteran D&Ders who have been both GMs and players. Using fire vs a troll etc isn't going to surprise them. In such an environment, if a GM wants to make the monsters mysterious, they have to create their own. The best rpg I ever played in was centred on hidden...

I don't know anything about Shadowrun but it sounds to me as if these modules are struggling to make the cyberpunk genre work as a campaign. In cyberpunk it's very in genre for the protagonists to be betrayed by their patron part way thru the mission. But at that point they rightly turn against...

If usual means the typical inhabitant of the game world - 0th-level humans in AD&D, 1st level commoners in 3e - then PCs are always special in the sense of being better. Due to the class system, they are also special relative to one another in the sense of having different abilities. However...

They can be, if they're special in different ways. That's the essence of niche protection.

Imbalance is an inevitable outcome of character build minigame gamism*, examples being 3e D&D and HERO System. I consider this to be a very bad form of gamism however because the game has been won permanently before play even starts. Combat minigame gamism, exemplified by 4e D&D (and also good...