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Reading about events like that, makes me wonder whether I would've been even able to conceptualize this future existing as a young kid. When people were still getting bullied for playing D&D, the idea that people would sell out Madison Square Garden for a an actual play would seem an...

Hmmm...if I were tasked with removing concentration (and again, I think doing so within the context of the current edition of D&D is not feasible), I think the trick would be to make the durations of spells much shorter, and reduce the wizard's HP back to d4. Even a spell that just lasts a...

While I think John Carter of Mars is a better movie than its box office take would indicate, it still fell short of the source material. Seeing a proper adaptation would be great. I think one of the problems adaptations of pulp works runs into (see also the Momoa Conan the Barbarian) is that...

The Tiffany Aching books, while ostensibly YA, are every bit as profound as the main Discworld series. So good!

Yeah, it's one of those things that is a fairly core component of balance at this point. It would not take much for martials to get completely outclassed in such a game. I know Spiritual Weapon is now Concentration. I would assume that there were other tweaks as well.

Definitely. Out of 19 short stories, I only skimmed/skipped two of them.

Depends on the context. If it's someone that I don't think will get the distinction, or I just don't want to get deep into the weeds, yeah, whatever I'm playing is "D&D." Otherwise I will say what I'm actually playing.

I finished reading the Cyberfunk! anthology. Like most anthologies, a mixed bag, but the quality is generally good, and it opens very strongly. Published in 2021, one of the stories features a social media owner attempting a hostile coup of the US. Cyberpunk, ever the Cassandra of genres. Now...

Same. Having been to a couple of his seminars, he's a showman and a salesman, sure, but he has such a flair and passion for talking about dice. Not to mention a ton of knowledge. I had a tough situation once with a player that was losing his eyesight. And he would declare suspiciously high...

Yeah, if you're running D&D 5e and want high fantasy without any hint of sci-fi or magitech, Forgotten Realms is probably your best bet. I've done patchwork settings and it's fun being able to draw from disparate worlds to stitch together your own. One of my favorite 5e campaigns took pieces of...

Yesss!

In my experience, people that are going to fudge their dice rolls aren't going to bother with weighted dice. They'll just roll and make up a number to their liking. One thing I've realized that pre-3e editions of D&D did right was that sometimes you wanted a high number, sometimes a low number...

That is surreal and amazing! I can only hope that people start using them in their games. I want to show up to a con game and have a DM plunk that thing on the table!

Just finished up Va-11 Hall-A, a cyberpunk visual/novel bartending sim. It took a bit of getting used to, as I hadn't really played (read?) a visual novel before, but once I got into the swing of it, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Was also surprised to see author Cassandra Khaw credited as a QA on it.

I don't know that I could pick a favorite D&D edition (given my mood, it jumps between BECMI, 1e, and 2e), but until 5e came along, 2e was the edition I played the most of, for the longest time. It made me so sad that the deluxe 2e reprints that came out some years back were the revised 2e...

Parable of the Sower is one of the most terrifyingly prophetic books I've ever read. Haunting and powerful. That sort of Orientalism is all over books of the late 19th century to the early 20th. Lots of Ballantine Adult Fantasy and pulp works are redolent with it. And frequently, written by...

Yeah, the role needs a Tom Hiddleston or Timothy Chalamet type build. I wouldn't want to see someone go full-on The Machinist for the role, though. There is the possibility that Elric could go the route of John Carter of Mars - that is to say, so influential that audiences had seen so many of...

My brother got his about two weeks ago. I still have yet to get mine. Grr!

Elric would be such a meaty role for an actor to inhabit. And the Melniboneans as the villains only resonate more as time has gone by. For all its satire, Snow Crash was incredibly prophetic. Heck, it's one of the few cyberpunk novels to predict the omnipresence of cellphones (When Gravity...