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Looking back at the original poem, it's not even clear that the vorpal blade beheaded the jabberwocky -- until it was already dead, that is: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock...

I'm sure many folks here are at least casual fans of Lego and may know that Lego has come up with a line of products aimed at girls. They didn't just make everything pink; they sent out cultural anthropologists to research how girls and boys around the world play, and some of their findings may...

In Monte Cook's old Line of Sight column, he has an article called "D&Disms" that he almost called "The Genius of D&D". In it, Monte goes against conventional wisdom to claim that some of D&D's great strengths have always been: levels, classes, hit points, and dungeons. Newer games have...

Some of us were discussing guns in a fantasy setting, and then I came across The Veil War, which imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" invading our world and facing confused US forces. I don't know if the author has D&D-style hit points in mind, but he has the US troops...

I haven't read much Gothic fiction -- just Dracula, really -- and the genre has gone profoundly out of fashion, but in its day it was extremely popular, and, as Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorne declared in Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, the first Gothic novel, Otranto, influenced modern...

Does anyone else remember the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album?

Modern RPGers probably think that the debate between rules-heavy new-school games and rules-light old-school games is a new debate, but it goes back centuries -- to the evolution of early wargames (or Kriegsspiel) used to train German military officers: Early recreational wargames were rather...

A standard complaint about D&D magic (and much RPG magic in general) is that it doesn't feel magical; it's too tactical, too well-defined, too scientific. Of course, if it's not well-defined, it's hard to adjudicate within a game -- and at least part of D&D's allure is that it's a game with...

The displacer beast always struck me as an odd monster. I suppose I should have realized it had a sci-fi origin: The displacer beast was inspired by the coeurl, a feline-like creature from the 1939 science fiction story "Black Destroyer" by A. E. van Vogt[1], later incorporated into the novel...

John Rateliff gives A Brief History of Tolkien roleplaying games, which includes a brief history of D&D and its influences -- many of which are obscure to newer players: The original D&D was clearly based in equal parts on JRRT & on Rbt E. Howard's Conan stories,[1] with a magic system inspired...

I took a brief look at Amazon's list of best-selling gaming books, and it looks like most people are, of course, buying D&D books: 1. Manual of the Planes 2. Martial Power 3. D&D Core Rulebook Gift Set The next item on the list isn't D&D; it gently mocks it: 4. Munchkin So, what gaming...

While discussing 4E and "Old School Gaming" (and why they aren't mutually exclusive), Korgoth mentioned how happy he was that perception no longer involved a die roll in 4E: Here's why we "roll to see things": Please watch this video and try to count the total number of times that the people...

I've noticed that all the URLs for the forums follow the same pattern as before, but with an additional "forum" sub-directory. Can we lose the extra sub-directory, so that the new URLs match the old?

Is this how elves live -- like the proto-Japanese Jomon hunter-gatherers? Archeologists studying Jomon hunter-gatherers have found not only hard-to-carry pottery (including pieces up to three feet tall) but also heavy stone tools, remains of substantial houses that show signs of repair, big...

The issue of realistic combat in games comes up regularly, and I thought I'd share some examples of what that might mean, because it's an important element of game design, which should play some part in 4E, and I don't think it means what many people seem to think it means. One-Shot Drops...

I just stumbled across this paleontology t-shirt, and I realized it would be inadvertently perfect for D&Ders. (In case you did not already know, dire wolves were real -- unlike many of the other dire beasties in D&D.)

I was reading an essay by Gerry Klug on how he created the classic James Bond RPG back in the day, and this tidbit explained why it was so good: The methodology used to design the James Bond game was a variant of the way I used when I was a Lighting Designer in theatre and rock 'n' roll. I first...

Another thread recently looked at games that fit into one book versus D&D with its tradition of three core books. I'd like to ask a related question: How would you divvy up the material in the core books? Is three the magic number? Is all that core material in the right books, or would you...

The recent thread on Pathfinder's Goblins pointed to Paizo's Reinventing The Wheel article, which included Ten Fun Facts About Goblins: Horse HateDog HateGoblins Raid Junkyards... This reminded me of an older thread where I asked for Three Characteristic Behaviors Per Monster. I thought we...

Magic items require a tremendous amount of human capital (expertise) and financial capital (gold) to create, and they generally appeal to a very narrow customer base (extremely wealthy individuals who choose to put themselves in danger) with very specific needs (i.e. the right magic item is...