Are Your Games Out of Alignment?

Problems with Alignment & Mystic Destiny There’s no way to be in fantasy roleplaying and avoid discussions of alignment. Some fans are fascinated by matching popular characters from fiction up with the nine alignments that first showed up in the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons but others (me included) Read more

Retconning Elves

Like many fans of fantasy roleplaying I’ve been hearing about Wizards of the Coast’s latest controversy (will they ever run out of them?). In the ramp up for the release of Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes for D&D 5th edition they’ve announced sex changing elves to stand in solidarity with the Read more

The Poetic Edda

Taking a book off of Tolkien’s bookshelf, I read The Poetic Edda. This rendition was first published in 1908 and edited and translated by Olive Bray. Some nice illustrations from W. G. Collingwood grace the pages. It covered some of the same ground as Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Norse Myths which Read more

Story Gamers vs. Murder Hobos

The tabletop roleplaying hobby has been around since the early 70s and involved a lot of people over the years.  That’s why it’s only natural that factions would develop.  These opinionated groups disparage each other online and wonder what state of affairs could have resulted in such wayward gamers.  Their Read more

The Myth of the Balanced Party

Fantasy roleplaying has a tradition of being executed by a party of adventurers whose skills complement each other.  Warriors use traditional weapons and armor to handle physical threats, wizards use spells to either give the party an advantage or deal with arcane threats, roguish types sneak into places and disarm Read more

Experience Wanted: Sources of Experience

People new to roleplaying read the section in the rule book they’re using about awarding experience to players and simply follow it.  Those who have been in the hobby a while know they can award experience different ways and each of those ways affects the campaign.  It is always surprising Read more

The Best D&D is Not D&D

I was going to title this post How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the OSR but before posting I checked to see if the title was taken. Jesse Goldshear beat me to it with a thoughtful post that expresses points in line with mine. I’m certainly not the Read more

Hooked On Appendix N

In the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide for Dungeons & Dragons first edition there are appendices marked with letters. Number 14 is Appendix N. It is a list of fantasy and science-fiction authors along with some notes from Gary Gygax. Gygax’ notes state that the authors and titles in Read more