Search results

When you look at the Bond, Who, and Batman franchises, they're all much older than the MCU, and about 15-30 years older than Star Wars. I think there's a generational divide at work. Dr. Who and Bond began with prior generations, so people today grew up with there already being multiple actors...

To my eye, there's more meat to those chapters of Lord of the Rings that the movie cut than there is the Hunt for Gollum. But there are so many ways this could go wrong. Doing it as an animated movie with the original actors returning to their roles seems the easiest. But it also feels like it...

I finished reading Maddox's Halo. Really a shame that he only wrote one novel. It packs a lot of questions into its short length, and the author clearly did some heavy reading as part of the creation process. From it I learned that the Uncanny Valley term comes from the roboticist Masahiro Mori...

That there are people that would insist that changing the Gully Dwarves is an afront to Paladine himself boggles my mind, but they absolutely are out there. Looking at the Gully Dwarves in the original trilogy, it's problematic. There's an examination of prejudice, where Raistlin sees through...

Absolutely. Listening to what some of these YouTubers do and give up in order to make it their career, it doesn't seem like a winning proposition. One thing I think about is how, back when I was playing shows and actively making music, I never had to worry about popular appeal. I could just...

I get why they left the gully dwarves behind for Shadow of the Dragon Queen, but I do think that they could've been brought back as a sort of survivalist species of dwarf without the ableism. If I recall correctly, this was one of the articles that was collected into The Magister sourcebook...

Teachers could be so cruel. I am right-handed, so I don't really have a reason for my bad penmanship. When I need to stuff to be legible, I have to write so slowly in print.

My approach to AD&D was very much informed by my young age. By my recollection, I started running Basic D&D when I was nine, and I moved onto AD&D when I was 11. When I re-read the core AD&D books as an adult, I realized that in a lot of ways I was back then I was still running Basic D&D, only...

Look at the numbers for D&D YouTubers and frequently you'll see that the ones that rely most on clickbait might have short-term gains around a particular controversy (like the OGL mess), but it rarely translates to long-term engagement. Having listened to some D&D YouTubers talk about how much...

As much as the kid in me loves rolled stats, when you do that, unless you've got some really trustworthy players, you're going to have people showing up to play with their highest stat of 11 and someone with no stat lower than 14. I tend to prefer class-based RPGs, but generally want either...

Our solution back in the day was to just use the rules from BECMI D&D. Probably still the best way to do it, in my opinion. I would argue that with the exception of the minimum/maximums by gender, it doesn't need to be fixed. To me, that's a huge part of the game, how you have this whole...

The first letter is legible, but the rest of it looks kinda like a seismograph. I'll admit to having terrible handwriting - when I look at my handwriting from when I was a kid and now, there's not much of a difference, unfortunately.

I had a few players that discovered just that particular joy. I was so happy when the one player completely outsmarted me! A salient point. While current D&D isn't my cup of tea, it's still selling pretty darn well. I suppose I should've said "change of leadership and diminished sales." But...

Sometimes I do wonder if that contributed to Wizards pulling back from celebrity-ish partnerships. I was at Origins when everything broke and her brand (and Jamison Stone's) completely disintegrated. It was wild.

At this point, for D&D to change course so dramatically, it would require a complete change of leadership. There's so much invested in the current model of D&D. Would I love a D&D more in keeping with OSR ideas, while still all-in on inclusion, absolutely. But I don't see that happening any time...

With a lot of problem players, yeah, I find that this is a road they're walking down, not any one particular moment. It can be hard. There've been times where I've been so shocked that someone might say something (and feel comfortable saying it in front of people!). Being a GM, you've already...

For a while Wizards was all in on celebrity collaboration and faces for the brand. But then it just went away. Not that I need Joe Manganiello telling me to drink Arkhola ("It's the cruelest!"), but it seemed like after a certain point D&D became a little faceless, less focused on individuals...

I think the exception to this is if a player says something bigoted at the table. That sort of thing cannot be left unchallenged at the moment, lest it look like a silent endorsement. That's an important thing to keep in mind. A lot of problem player behaviors come out of a place of hurt, or...

Updating FASERIP to present-day seems like it would be terribly odious. Comic book continuity was already hanging together by a thread back then. Now, it's pretty hopelessly convoluted. The thing about oWoD is that it's so steeped in the counterculture of that time. The art, all those quotes...

As 5.5e has ratcheted up the complexity of the game another notch, I know I'd love to see a full "Basic D&D" line. But I know it's exceedingly unlikely. There are already many established OSR games that are doing that anyway.