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I've had this happen a handful of times while RPing, most notably in a friend's Forgotten Realms game during the D&D 3.5 era where I decided to play a paladin who had deliberately dumped Intelligence, based largely on a feeling of frustration that my own 'smarts' weren't allowing me to succeed...

I'm going to disagree with this take -- there are lots of examples of 'technology' that is 'out there' but that nobody bothers with, from modern automotive automation that simply isn't being used to the formula for New Coke. At this moment, it's folly to confidently state whether technologies...

I honestly wonder how much of the love for Planescape as a setting is based, not on direct experience with Zeb Cook's original setting, but folks who played the CRPG or played a tabletop campaign inspired by the CRPG after the year 2000? The data presented on setting sales (in threads related to...

I was there this past weekend as well as in 2021 for the 'capped' con, and weirdly, it seemed that more people were on-board with masking at this con than at 2021 -- last year, it seemed there was at least one person at each table I gamed at who would at best leave the mask over his (and it was...

Not sure why this would be a priority, when Legend of the Five Rings exists. As unimpressed as I am personally with Spelljammer as a setting, seeing how popular it was in its original release, plus that there is very little out there, even today, that resembles it (maybe Space: 1899?) goes a...

It should be noted that this, by itself, doesn't allow Vecna to identify every spell cast by enemy spell casters. There are no rules for identifying spellcasting in the Players Handbook -- those rules only exist in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, p.85: "To [identify a spell], a character can...

I have to say I feel very odd when listening to conversations about the old FASERIP system; I also played the heck out of it back in the day, but I far preferred Champions as a super heroic game system. Of course, Champions is all but dead these days -- even the Sixth Edition rules, which have...

So it looks like we're getting the same treatment for D&D and Magic: the Gathering in the 2020s that Monopoly got in the 1990s after Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers. It might be a bumpy ride.

I guess I can't hypothesize about D&D Beyond, since I don't really understand how their system implements published material, but for Fantasy Grounds, the implementation seems obvious -- the 'reprints' of the two existing books will likely be implemented as separate data sources, so you can...

I get the arguments for and against the IP rights clauses in the terms and conditions; what's got me scratching my head is this: PUBLICITY RIGHTS By participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, Entrant agrees to allow the Wizards and/or Wizards' designee the perpetual, royalty-free...

Absolutely agree with you there -- if you were hoping to convert your old TSR adventures and use them with the new campaign book, you're probably pretty disappointed. Though I have read some older fans who have basically decided to take the approach that they'll adopt the stuff they like about...

Castles Forlorn was an adventure box set published in 1993 and focused entirely on the domain of Forlorn, particularly the time-entangled Castle Tristenoira. I'm not aware of any TSR or SSS published adventures set in Dementlieu or Richemulot, but that doesn't mean a DM couldn't set adventures...

The text for the Dhampir Vampiric Bite ability (VRGtR p.17) says you can empower yourself in one of those two ways of your choice, so you don't get both benefits. Also, you can only use the empowerment a number of times per day equal to your proficiency bonus. You do, however, get advantage with...

I think this also depends on the particular world you're using -- if, for example, you're basing your campaign world on Greyhawk, then it makes perfect sense for the high priest of Celestian to be both very high-level, because that's how Greyhawk traditionally works, and also have Find the Path...

Hear, hear. Let me try to get this discussion onto a more Ravenloft-specific topic. Specifically, despite the impression that much of 'classic' Ravenloft has changed for this book, there's a surprising amount of that classic material that still applies, or can at least inform the current lore...

A friend of mine ran a campaign featuring Sertrous as the BBEG; it was the last 3.5 campaign he ran before switching over to Pathfinder.

I'm leery of the concept of 'skilled play' as described here, because I think RPGs have evolved past their initial Gygaxian origins and the best ones are no longer about what those old-school games focused on. It's certainly possible to incorporate win conditions into RPG play; it was done in...

That's actually covered -- the target of Raise Dead has to make a check (in AD&D, this was a system shock roll, while in Ravenloft 3E this was a Fortitude save). Failing the check means that the subject comes back as an undead creature (of the DM's/Dark Powers' choice). Plus there's the...

For additional support for this point, note that every edition of Ravenloft has altered how magic works within the Dread Realms, including the Raise Dead spell, yet no version of Ravenloft I'm aware of has made it impossible or an auto-fail to cast Raise Dead on a native of Ravenloft. (Casting...

Curious that most of the 'big' domains get six pages of description, including Barovia. A couple come in at just four pages (Bluetspur and the Carnival), while a couple get eight pages (Borca, probably due to the presence of both Ivana Boritsi and Ivan Dilisniya as characters worthy of...