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The recent reintroduction of Kara-Tur in the pages of Dragon magazine, has set-off a few complaints of stereotyping, which reminded me of the topic of real world analogues in campaign settings. While Kara-Tur is undeniably an adaptation of Southeast Asia, this is oddly rare in Fourth Edition: one of the design goals of the redesign of the Forgotten Realms (also known as the "nuking of the Realms") was the removal of real world analogues.

But why? This is one of the odder changes to the Realms. The benefits of most of the others tweaks (reduction in gods, removal of high level NPCs, re-addition of mystery) are obvious, almost inarguable. But what are the benefits of removing real world analogues?

Pros

The largest benefit of adding a real world analogue to your fantasy campaign setting

O clube RPGArautos convidam todos a participarem nosso evento no dia 16 de Outubro de 2011, a partir das 10 horas, no divertido e animado espaço da Ludus Luderia, a quem agradecemos imensamente pela amistosa recepção. A Ludus fica na Rua Treze de Maio, 972, em São Paulo. Os interessados deverão se inscrever pelo e-mail inscricao@rpgarautos.com.br. Apenas os jogadores pré-inscritos estarão dispensados do pagamento de couvert lúdico, que permite a utilização do espaço. Os demais deverão pagar um valor de normalmente R$ 20,00 para entrar na casa. Além disso, nossas vagas são limitadas!!! Aceitaremos inscrições até as 11 horas do dia 15, sábado. Ou até o fim das

This year’s GenCon didn’t have much in the way of big revelations from WotC. They announced a couple of books we had already heard about, revealed the name of a book we had already seen on Amazon two months prior, The big, shocking announcement that no one saw coming was the return of miniatures, AND the miniature skirmish game, which are going to be released in non-randomized packs!

Holy poop!

This is probably my fiftieth blog on minis. You can read the highlights here, here, and here.

Minis, the Way Pelor Intended

The new sets will be pre-built war armies, boxes of compatible enemies. This better serves the needs of a skirmish game, as there’s less buy-in needed to play. This better serves the needs of role-players, as there’s less buy-in needed to run an encounter.

So What Makes A Great Villain (or the Role of Moral Relativism in Your Campaign). 

My players and I were debating the other day the eternal question of what makes a great villain.  "Amoral motivation," quipped one.  "No," replied another.  "That assumes there is a singular sense of morality, which is not true in most sophisticated world philosophies."  Parroting the great Justice Stevens, who famously quipped "I know it when I see it" (of course, he was referring to pornograhy), another said, "morality, while following social norms, is variable.  But I know evil when I see it." 

Everyone seemed to nod, as if this platitude ended the debate. 

Did it?  Or is it that we "know evil when we see it" because most player groups come from (more or

Greetings,

Well,  today for me has been all about searching for new players, resources and for the most part getting ready. I must say that many aspects of the DnD world are fairly hidden, more hidden than I would expect in todays world of information but alas here we are and here I am searching away.

You might be wondering why I titled this post 'The Great Delve' the reason for that in its entirety is facebook. I view facebook with the kind of contempt I view a mangey and hungry wolf with...the kind that involves a very large distance.  That being said I have come by a scoll of information that suggests that everyone today uses facebook. If everyone uses it, everyone includes Dungeons and Dragons player...so I joined Facebook with a representative account. Of course, this by

I posted a link on the Neuroglyph Games site to my EN World Review of the recent issue of Kobold Quarterly (Summer Edition).  There are some pretty cool articles for D&D 4E gamers in this issue, and I did an article-by-article run-down of the contents so gamers know if they want to grab this issue or not.

But as I was reviewing the magazine, and noting its contents, I had to stop and wonder a bit about how the gaming community as a whole was dealing with 4E.  Now I'm not trying to start an "edition wars" flamefest, but KQ is one of those magazines which is pretty close to the pulse of the fantasy role-playing community as a whole. 

Back in the day, KQ was a staunch supporter of AD&D, and many solid articles of all kinds got published by the Kobold-In-Chief.  But over

Let's get right to it, according to the gaming trade magazine ICv2, in Quarter 2 of 2011 (April-June) Paizo's Pathfinder line passed WotC's D&D as the best selling RPG. For the first time in the history of the hobby, D&D is not the best selling game.

But is this something to get worked-up about?

The Articles

The article by ICv2 can be found here. A few weeks ago, the CEO of Paizo echoed similar sentiments here.

There was also some discussion of both on the forums before the threads were locked or moved to the RPG General forum near the very bottom of the non-legacy forums, where forum threads are sent to die.

There's some dissent on theWotC forums about the veracity of the ICv2 article, because it might not contain DDI. But, by the same token, it might not reflect direct sales

To track and hunt those that commit crimes, use a

Blood Tracker Dagger

But for combat, you might be better off binding yourself to a

Serpent Tail Blade

A thought that had been bouncing around in my head for a while:

Random Demon Name Generator (Least and Lesser), Version 1

And a new sword:

Sapahi's Scimitar