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Just about every kingdom or territory in Tellene stands at a precipice. Just one example (found by opening to a random page in the Kingdoms of Kalamar core book) is Shynabyth. The kingdom bans all religion, all clerics. King Joto seeks to depose the Theocrat of nearby Slen. Prince Sobryn works...

Sure, most of the editions work as core rules plus one book, but as you said, the more books you add, the worse most editions become. Sometimes I even think about giving 4e a try with just the three core books in play, see what that's like.

I finished reading Bradbury's The October Country. Positively loved it, and I've no idea how it's taken me this long to get to reading it. There's loss and yearning and orange October leaves spilling from the pages. The story Homecoming in particular hit me hard. The more Bradbury I read, the...

100%. It's gritty, with a lived-in sense of desperation. Even the well-off aren't exempt from the conditions of the world.

Is there any edition of D&D where that isn't the case? 1e, maybe, but even then, people will debate Unearthed Arcana's additions until the cows come home.

They could expand the story massively, as Dragonlance did so much backfilling of the story as it progressed. But I think that would be a huge mistake. Even beyond the contradictory plot elements, it's just too much. Best bet is to worry about each Chronicles book at a time. Do one a season...

About 150 hours of Cyberpunk Red this year, plus Shadowrun, DCC RPG, Shadowdark, and some other games at cons.

I liked the Wheel of Time series, but will admit that knowing how expensive it was, how risk-averse streaming platforms can be, and how much material they had to adapt, it was always going to be a long shot that it completed the story. That being said, it's a completely different scale. The...

Tunnels and Trolls is a lot of fun. But yeah, some of those spell names have not aged well. The way it abstracts combat works, but requires a different way to approach the game conceptually. As for rolling buckets of dice, I feel like for some games it's a feature, not a bug (see also...

Animation and D&D are both in very different places from 2008. There have been multiple successful animated series based on RPGs. And doing it as a live action TV series, that would require a heck of a budget for the special effects, what with all the dragons and draconians. You know, I still...

That's kinda my feeling as well. Star Wars might be the exception, since the movies are clearly divided into trilogies.

As I've gotten older, I've started appreciated the theatrical cuts more. I deeply love the books, and while I appreciate all the little bits the extended versions include, I think the theatrical version work better as movies. They've got better flow and pacing. The one exception I'd allow is...

Yeah, it's a bummer. Wherever the license goes, I feel like they're going to have a hard time even matching the bar set by DCC Lankhmar. Out of all the RPG adaptations to-date, it felt like the best fit and most true to the source. That would have been amazing.

It's a wildly imaginative, evocative book. Will definitely return to it one day, since it's so replayable. Ran it entirely seat-of-my-pants and the crew ended up opening a book that unleashed Count Strahd. They ran.

Haven't heard that name in forever and a day! Priam Agrivar kinda was an eye-opener as to how a paladin should act. Gone was the rigid, unbending crusader. Here was someone that was fallible but driven to do good. More concerned with living up to his own code himself than trying to force his...

I dunno, I think that there is a difference between someone doing an action in the game with intention behind it, and someone doing it because they just want to throw down and roll some dice. But also, if they're knowingly engaging in something to create friction within the gaming group (and to...

I remember when Vampire the Masquerade came out. Even before then, really, because we got one of the preview booklets and immediately thought "what's this?!" I was already devouring Anne Rice's books, had read Dracula multiple times. I wouldn't say I was a Goth back then, but I was definitely on...

It's not so much the tricks that I care about - I'm going to use the same strategies and dirty tricks (plus some of my own devising). What I am talking about specifically are the rulings. Sometimes players will push for certain interpretations, shall we say, based on the rule of cool. And a lot...

My take is to tell the player that if we're going to go down that route for them, the enemies are also going to be able to use it. I find that, with some exceptions, knowing that they'll be on the receiving end of whatever crackpot maneuver they've come up with as well helps them reconsider...

As I've gotten older, I've learned not to underestimate the appeal of the social outside-the-game elements. That being said, completely divesting yourself of the game until you hear the words "roll initiative" boggles my mind.