Recent content by Akrasia

Regarding material designed specifically for VsD, there now is a complete campaign available, Secrets of the Golden Throne. It has a strong "Arthurian" flavour to it. There also are a few shorter adventures available now.

Having played a lot of VsD over the past several months, and having played a lot of MERP back in the day, I pretty strongly disagree with much of the above two posts. Regarding the system: I found the initiative system in VsD to be pretty straightforward and easier to use in practice than the...

Exactly why I love it so much! MERP was my favourite FRPG back in the day. 🧙‍♂️

This is an excellent game! I'm currently running two campaigns using Against the Darkmaster.

I joined August 2004. I posted pretty regularly for a few years but haven't been that active over the past dozen or so. But I still visit semi-regularly (some years more often than others).

Now this is "simply not true." 2e AD&D core rulebooks had about 50% as many sales during its run than the 1e AD&D rulebooks did. (See Ben Riggs's data and book Slaying the Dragon.) We don't have publicly available data on 4e, but I strongly suspect that given how quickly it wilted and was...

So far I dislike that feats look to be no longer optional and that inspiration no longer can be readily ignored. I play with neither feats nor inspiration in order to foster a "gritty" and "old school" feel to my game and that may not be possible with 5.5e. I also like to minimize the choices...

I'm currently running a Greyhawk campaign, using the 1983 Gygax box set as my base (modifying a few things, filling in some other things, etc.). Right now the characters are in Hommlet, trying to clean out the Moathouse...

I haven't been using feats in my 5e game and I'd prefer to leave them out of the core rules. Getting rid of feats (making them optional) was one of my favourite things about 5e. Looks like that's no longer going to be the case. sigh :(

I don't like feats at all and don't use them in my 5e Greyhawk campaign. So I'm disappointed that they now seem to be no longer optional in the play test document. Likewise, I don't like inspiration and don't use it in my game. But it now seems to be required for humans at least. I use some...

I disagree. :) There are 5 seasons planned. Amazon could've devoted 2 seasons to the 1500-1700 period (covering the forging of the rings and the War of the Elves and Sauron). Given the long lifespans of dwarves and Númenoreans, there would be no need to "swap out" (for the most part) the mortal...

I like the way the Numenor looks in the trailers I've seen so far. The scenery in general is beautiful (and Middle-earthy). I like that ents were shown in the trailer. But I remain extremely disappointed by the decision to compress 1700+ years of Middle-earth history into a few years (maybe a...

I really love Jack Vance's fantasy works. EGG mentioned the Dying Earth stories in the original Appendix N (and they're included in the OP). But I find Vance's Lyonesse trilogy to be just as (if not more) inspiring. Those novels were written in the 1980s, and hence not included in the 1e DMG...

I was about to post Abercrombie's First Law novels as well. Great stuff. I also think "Best Served Cold" is awesome. For D&D inspiration, though, the frontier land described in "Red Country" (with crumbling remnants of an earlier empire) is almost perfect. (I haven't read the most recent...

Interesting ranking. The difference in rank between the Essentials and Starter Kit is not that significant. But the Essentials Kit is superior to the Starter Kit in pretty much every way (it includes a full rule set [up to level 6] and a more interesting sandbox). My two favourite adventure...