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I spent a lot of 3rd Edition playing Living Greyhawk before it ending at the onset of 4th Edition to make way for Living Forgotten Realms. With 4e winding down I wonder what will replace LFR. In an ENWorld discussion on potential replacements one idea was suggested that really resonated: a brand new world. A new setting exclusively for the living campaign.

A New World? Why?!

At first, making another new campaign setting for D&D seems like adding an extra nipple to a male cat: it’s not getting use out of multitudes already in its possession. At last count we have twelve and six half Campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Mystara, Spelljammer, Planescape, Blackmoor, Dark Sun, Birthright, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Eberron, and the Nentir Vale plus the quasi-settings of Al Qadim,

A convention of D&D campaign worlds and much fantasy fiction is the great metropolitan capital, the focal trade-city and hub of the continent, which is often a nation unto itself. This only somewhat reflects reality: there are many great cities in the world but few tend to be city-states, which predate the medieval periods D&D bases itself on. Large cities tend to be a rarity in the medieval world, having size limitations.

And yet every D&D setting has some large city. Greyhawk takes its name from the central Free City of that setting. Dragonlance has Palanthas, the Forgotten Realms has Waterdeep (and others), Eberron has Sharn, and so on. Planescape has Sigil. The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories have Lankhmar and the Discworld novels

You can’t judge a book by its cover. Unless you’re judging a book’s aesthetics, in which case you can totally judge a book by its cover. It’s actually recommended. It's a vital part of the packaging.

Recent article on the front page discussed a couple key parts of a new edition: the title font, the design of the books , and the ampersand. I thought I’d weigh in on the subject.

The Three Designs

I’ll start by quickly reiterating the three types of book design.

There’s Consume, Engage, and Cherish. Consume books are essentially gaming textbooks, they hold the information you need and you wants access as easily and quickly as possible. Engage books grab a hold of your mind and enflame your imagination. Cherish books are collectibles or

One final blog on D&D Next and then I’ll take a break for a few blogs.

One of the big questions regarding 5e is how they core books will be structured: how they’re planning on release an acceptable amount of modularity for the game without releasing massive tomes that dwarf Ptolus or make the Pathfinder core book look like a pamphlet on paper conservation.

Here’s what I’d do if I were in charge planning the books:

The Return of Basic & Advanced!

I’d start with Basic Edition. Now, hear me out, put down the pitchforks and hold back on the comments crying “we don’t need two product lines again!!” One of the problems D&D has is that it’s a giant big book that’s inaccessible to new players, or rather three giant books that are fairly

Earlier this week I wrote about some of the hows of limiting options for Players, which could be summarized as: be fair, let them know in advance, and try not to hamper their creativity.

Today's blog is about why you can and possibly should limit player options.

Campaign Worlds

There are two ways to define something: explain what it is and explain what it is not. You classify what shape something is by where it ends, and the absence of something is an important clarifying feature. Doughnuts are defined because they have a whole in the middle. I spell it "doughnut" instead of "donut" because I'm Canadian, and our self-proclaimed defining feature is that we're not Americans.

One way to define a campaign setting is by what races are and are not present. Removing a common race from the equation