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The short version: If every participant has something meaningful to do. If one or more participants are stuck waiting and watching while others get to do all of the meaningful stuff, then it's not an exciting encounter. Pretty much any encounter can become an exciting encounter, whether it is...

Hell no. I only buy products that I like or want, and I don't feel compelled to use something just because I bought it. I quit collecting "one of each" Star Wars figure about 10 years ago (just buying the ones I want, even if it ends up being most of them), and I'm totally clean of the "gotta...

I'm torn on the issue because I've been on both ends of the experience. It does suck when you're running a game and one player is inconsistent in his or her attendance. It does let the other players down as well. And if the DM isn't consistent, it leaves all of the players high and dry. On...

It seems awfully similar to "Eldarin" to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Eldarin

Sounds like Marvin the Martian just hit the Realms with an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. (It was blocking his view of Venus) I was a big fan of the Realms in the days of the old Grey Box, when it was fresh and new and not obsessively detailed and clutterd. At some point during 2E I...

You mean apart from the Thief's ability to cast Magic-User spells from scrolls, right?

I'm in agreement. I loved the idea when 3rd Edition first came out, but in actual practice it possibly ended up being a horrendous pain in the butt in preparing for and running a game.

Wasn't it 2nd Edition that started putting level caps on spells like Fireball and Magic Missile?

The "Freeport" trilogy could also be considered a defining 3E adventure by many.

I quite like the "Taint" variant rule in Unearthed Arcana (and Oriental Adventures) for creating that "tangible evil" in games. Taint being not simply philosophical evil but corruption and evil manifest in the physical world. I think it's in the SRD as well.

"Yugoloth" is still a terrible name. I hated it when they introduced it in the "Outer Planes" Monstrous Compendium appendix, and I still hate it. Wish they'd just ditched the "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri" crap when they went back to calling them Devils and Demons in 3rd Edition. The sound like...

There are probably also a lot of ideas being worked into 4th Edition which were discussed when designing 3rd Edition, but were left out because they were too radical a change or couldn't be fully developed in the time that they had. Oh, and this "$E" stuff is almost as clever and original as...

Basic/Expert D&D: B2 Keep on the Borderlands, X1 Isle of Dread

Asmodeus is already the chief evil god in Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous. He was one of the four Old Gods associated with the four elements. He became corrupted by the pure forces of evil and cast into the prison of Hell, where he became Asmodeus. It works very well in that book's mythology.

You're already buying a book filled with stuff that you aren't going to use for your Wizard with Complete Arcane or Complete Mage. As both a DM and a player, I would much rather have had all of the new base classes in the Complete series in a single book instead of spread throughout four books...

I would much rather have additional classes and races added in such a fashion (like the 3.5e PH2) than the usual class- or race- focused splatbook style. There is a much better chance that I'll actually use more of the material in the book than if it's a book on Arcane Magic and there is one...

I think that a brand new setting would probably work better for 4E. Greyhawk just feels very much in the OD&D/AD&D 1e traditions, and retrofitting it to versions of the game that move farther and farther away from that tradition just forces changes that are likely to bother tha faithful. I...

The 2e DMG was almost completely and utterly worthless, in my opinion. Granted, I had played B/X D&D and AD&D 1st Edition for 3 or 4 years by the time 2nd Edition came out. About the only thing I ever used the 2e DMG for was magic item descriptions. The 2e "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb...

I hate the idea of updating the core rules in later expansion books. It just makes for more books to carry around, and more books to have to refer to in (and out of) play. If enough revisions and updates are being made, I'd rather have a whole new edition. Even without specific 4th Edition...

Agreed; 2nd Edition was mostly a compilation of some previous expansion material and an overall clean-up of the rules, but it was very similar mechanically. The difference in tone was substantial though, and I don't see how 2E would not be considered a different "era" than 1E. The only reason...