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Setting Project: The world of Ballad
So, I have had a stressful life of late. I distracted myself by coming up with a new campaign world. Some people drink, I apparently come up with fictional worlds. Ballad is a high fantasy setting. It is leaning into a lot of mysterious magic rather than the notion of magic like technology that you find in Eberron or Ravnica for instance. I also started with the premise that humans were rare. The assumption in most settings is that humans are the “us” stand-in and not innately magical. They are the neutral default and all other races are alterations on the human base. This is problematic and should be discussed,…
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Talking about high level play and reasons why it isn’t happening.
I have thoughts on the discussion about why people are not playing high level characters in D&D.
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Removing Monks 2 The Paladin option
So, I am trying this again. Another part of my series of blog posts explaining how you might remove the Monk from D&D and keep some of the playstyle intact. The last post caused a good deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who objected to even the suggestion that there might be a problem with Monks, on a cultural level. I will leave that aside for the moment. I can recognize there are issues with Monks and still love them. I have played them and I have written subclasses for them. I will do so again. I will instead focus on the purpose of these blog posts.…
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Removing Monks
I have written previously about the problems embedded with Monks in D&D. I say that as a guy who has always loved the class. Despite my love, there are some deeply problematic cultural stereotyping embedded in the class. The fact is, they default fiction of the class is a western misunderstanding of East Asian cultures and deeply lacking knowledge of the rich tapestry of martial arts that are found in the world. I don’t think those original designs, or designers, were coming from a place of hate, maliciousness, or even knowing it was a problem. I think they even meant well. Awareness over the years has improved and now we…
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Warlock Patron: Animal Spirits
Here we offer a very different sort of Warlock Patron: The Animal Spirits.
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The Basics of the Game: Reviewing the Shadowrun Sixth World Beginners Box Set
My streamed review of the Shadowrun Sixth World Beginners Box.
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The Basics of the Game: Review of new Modern AGE setting of Threefold
I review the new Modern AGE setting of Threefold and talk about Gencon. This is from the stream I did on Twitch.
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Review of the John Carter of Mars RPG.
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Twitch stream review of Modern Age Companion and discussion of RPG Workshop
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Other Than Gods
This post was inspired by a question I asked on Twitter. How do you explain clerics in D&D in a world with no gods? There were some excellent responses. I decided it was worth expounding on.
