Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

This is inspired by, if not probably the most direct response to, Catty Big's inquiry regarding a 5th edition review.  It's also heavily rambling, so hold on to your hats. My tastes in D&D and it's ilk are pretty eclectic.  As with music I rarely like all of one thing, but tend to find certain things I really like in most products.  Below are general impressions of several editions and related products.  Keep in mind these are all subjective feelings and not deep analyses.  Your mileage may vary. Caveat:  Sometimes I like to build for lots of damage or one thing or another. But usually I'm not too fussy about balance, as long as I feel my character's abilities haves something interesting to contribute both inside and outside of combat. Swords & Wizardry (0th edition retroclone) Advantages:  Small and pretty straightforward.  Pared down and easy to tinker with. Disadvantages:  Some bits still feel a bit cobbled together an...

Today for your reading pleasure, a brilliant and delicious excerpt dredged from the corners of the internet: ---- >> Anonymous 06/02/12(Sat)06:24 No. 19334013 Anonymous No. 19334013 06/02/12(Sat)06:24 No. 19334013 Once, we had an elf who fucked one human, once, and developed this psychotic obsession with bringing him back to life after he died. She sort of faded into the background after a while, we forgot about her, but two campaigns later her research started popping up, and this escalated until it turned out that she was basically getting ready to harvest all life on Earth to try and bring her pet goldfish back to life. By the end of it were were up to our balls in hideous soul-stealing goblin mutants that ate souls and vomited them back up as pearl catalysts for some ancient resurrection ritual. Five fucking campaigns of fighting this insane elf, motivated by love and heartbreak to destroy the world and overthrow the will of the gods to bring her husba...

Inspired by Paul Schaefer's recent comments regarding am mashup of Ravenloft, Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu's Dreamlands. Setup:  The PCs are modern era human dreamers, relatively new to the Dreamlands, but acquainted with Dreamlands lore to some extent through outside sources.  It seems the Dreamlands of Earth have mutated since classical times (i.e. 1920s era Call of Cthulhu lore).  As it approaches time for the stars being right in the waking world, the Earth's Dreamlands have separated into loosely connected nightmare realms.  Each realm is given shape by the will of great old ones worshiped as Chaos Gods, or by powerful but decadent or delusional dreaming human sorcerers.  Life in these realms is nasty, brutish, short and typically a bit Dickensian. As their mortal bodies lie in comatose slumber in the waking world, Hypnos has taken an wry and inscrutable interest in the PCs, shaping the bodies of some into elf or dwarf or other less savory fare. For ...