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  1. Mark Hope

    D&D 2E Huh. AD&D 2e is my favorite D&D

    Does anyone use much of the stuff from the High Level DM Option book? I never gave it much thought but on a revisit found there was quite a bit that could add some colour and class features for post-name level play. Particularly interesting for players not interested in the domain game and...
  2. Mark Hope

    One innovation per edition

    4e - definitely bloodied. Such an easy concept to add to any other edition. And so much fun to implement. "It's doing what now?!"
  3. Mark Hope

    White Dwarf Reflections #15

    Don Turnbull's notes on running the D modules closely mirror the prep I did for them a year or two back when running them under a houseruled 2e. He doesn't mention the roleplaying elements, but my notes don't contain a great deal of material on that too, even though I run a roleplay-heavy game...
  4. Mark Hope

    D&D 3E/3.5 Combining 3.0 and 3.5 - A Thread

    Have you looked at Arcana Evolved from Monte Cook/Malhavoc? It is an interesting take on 3.5 that you may find a source of ideas. He did a 3.0 version as well called Arcana Unearthed.
  5. Mark Hope

    WotC Do Half Giants jump the shark?

    Dark Sun is fuzzy on the cause: "In some lost millennium, as a bizarre experiment or perhaps as some sort of curse, giants were magically crossbred with humans." It doesn't really say much more than that on their origins :)
  6. Mark Hope

    WotC Do Half Giants jump the shark?

    Half-giants are a player race in Dark Sun. They were magically bred originally but now are their own thing and have been around for a few thousand years in-game. They have some very specific characteristics in Dark Sun, though. If you and your players are into it, go for it. No reason to...
  7. Mark Hope

    Best large-scale fantasy campaign plot

    Night Below and Return to the Tomb of Horrors are both excellent - the former has incredible scope and the latter has some of the coolest locations I've seen in a while. Dragon's Crown for Dark Sun is also fantastic. You cross the entire of the Dark Sun map (as it was before they expanded it to...
  8. Mark Hope

    D&D General The Joy of the Mashup - what I found.

    Love doing this. My current arc is Return to the White Plume Tomb of Forlorn Darkness. It's Return to the Tomb of Horrors but using the area map of White Plume Mountain, with the PCs visiting some of the other locations on the map en route to the Tomb, including the mummy lair from Lords of...
  9. Mark Hope

    D&D 1E Common House Rules for AD&D?

    It is/was the home campaign of Larry DiTillio - he detailed his approach to glyphs of warding and poisons in a couple of Dragon magazine articles. Great articles. I use his glyph stuff (Dragon #50) pretty much as-is and took inspiration from some of the poisons material (Dragon #59) as well. He...
  10. Mark Hope

    D&D 1E Common House Rules for AD&D?

    Soooo many houserules... Ability score mods start at 13, like BX, but flatten out like AD&D Some new races Bonus spells for wizards No race/class limitations or level limits except sometimes Humans get +1 to any stat and 2 background powers from a big list Clerics prepare spells from a large...
  11. Mark Hope

    D&D 2E Boss Help needed- DMs

    Yep - exactly this. You put it more clearly than I did :D
  12. Mark Hope

    D&D 2E Boss Help needed- DMs

    At that level of play, you'll have a more enjoyable encounter by using a larger amount of enemies rather than one or two powerful foes. Your party will tear through anything up to about 15 HD in three or four rounds if they focus fire, particularly with a 16th level cleric on hand. Similarly, as...
  13. Mark Hope

    Which Edition of D&D (or OSR Ruleset) Has the Best GMing Advice?

    From what I understand, the expanded content is largely the stuff on dungeons at the end - the first 100 pages were meant to be in the DMG but the rest of the DMG ran too long. That said, I don't see why it wasn't included anyway - it would have brought the DMG to about 290 pages, some 50 pages...
  14. Mark Hope

    Which Edition of D&D (or OSR Ruleset) Has the Best GMing Advice?

    The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide is excellent and was meant to be part of the 2e DMG but was cut for space reasons before being expanded into a full book. The stuff that remains in the 2e DMG I find pretty good - I refer to it more often than the 1e DMG these days tbh. Also excellent...
  15. Mark Hope

    Space: 1999 Coming From Modiphius

    The Eagle was one of the coolest ship designs from that era. Maybe only surpassed by the Liberator. Also, huge fan of The Black Hole. Used the design of the masked crew for a long-running NPC in a D&D game. Come to think of it, I was using music from the movie in my game last night!
  16. Mark Hope

    Keep on the Borderland and no healing...?

    There's nothing saying that the Keep doesn't have potions and scrolls for sale. The first session of my most recent run of that adventure had the PCs going into crypts below the Keep to find a fungus that only grew on corpses so Keep clerics could make healing potions with it.
  17. Mark Hope

    Name OAR desires from sources other than TSR?

    A compendium of White Dwarf content would be fantastic - and incomplete if it did not include the wonderful Irilian.
  18. Mark Hope

    D&D General Defining "New School" Play (+)

    In my Dark Sun games, yes - because resource scarcity is part of the feel of the setting. I let the players roll or just assume they recover 50% of arrows - their choice, so long as they're consistent. In my homebrew game, I don't really care. I am aware that some players like to track arrows...
  19. Mark Hope

    Why it was called "Dungeons & Dragons 3e"

    You'll be claiming the numbering of the Rambo movies makes sense next. ;)
  20. Mark Hope

    D&D 1E AD&D- The DM Player

    I always felt that the admonition to frown on player knowledge could be taken too far. It would be for each DM to judge, but I think there would be a degree of folk knowledge about certain monster, spells, magic items etc. and it would be OK for players to display this. Like, if I asked a...
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