I’ve read some interesting blog posts in the past few days:
Geek Native: Toward a Shared Language
When we are talking about a thing in the RPG community, are we actually discussing a thing or are we sort of talking around a subject? Is one of the reasons there’s little academic discussion of how RPGs work because we really don’t have terms that function as idioms for a whole community?
Castalia House: Alignment is Still Weirdly Controversial
Alignment is in the game because, to the original designers, works by Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock were considered to be at least as synonymous with fantasy as Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Jack Vance’s Cugel, and Tolkien’s Gandalf. This in and of itself makes alignment weird to nearly everyone under about the age of forty or so. Things are further complicated by the fact that the concept of alignment lost more than a little in its translation to role-playing rules. Further, the waters were hopelessly muddied with the introduction of the Myers Briggs style nine-point system with the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Needles has some thoughts on N1: Cult of the Reptile God
Yes these Basic D&D monsters are everywhere in D&D & yet no one seems to think that they could be far more useful as Lovecraftian horrors. I’ve used these guys time & again as the remains of Serpent men slaves. In fact the lizard men on the whole are actually the forth tier down on the rung of inhuman slaves to the former serpent men kings on my version of Hyperborea. There are several key things to keep in mind here. One the adventure has be run with all of the adventure locations intact, two things turn very ugly very quickly when several key event’s triggers are pulled and three this is in place a very lethal module especially in the latter half of Against the Reptile God. The town of Orlane and the adventure that surrounds it are really the stars of the adventure and because of its carefully written background its very much tied into Greyhawk’s campaign setting. The DM is going to need to gut that connection or exploit it as I did with a star gate that runs over to Greyhawk. But my version of Greyhawk is a sword & sorcery driven land not that drivel that passed off as the the western Flanaess of today.
Enjoy!
