Elemental Reductions

 This post is a response to Xaosseed's post Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change (RPG Blog Carnival) .  I suggest reading that first in its entirety, before I dig into it.  My goal here is to have a deeper discussion, not just to rain Xaosseed's linguistic parade.  This lede hooked me: The RPG Blog Carnival prompt from Beneath Foreign Planets of WORDS! Etymology, Onomatology and Linguistics sparked some other thoughts for me - on the stability of language when there are very long-lived organisms around.   Xaosseed shared the hypothesis of the post: The core thought here is that you can find thousand year old elves, dragons and giants around - presumably still speaking the same language with the same accent as when they learned their languages in their your - so accents and languages would change much more slowly in such settings than in our own world.  Xaosseed then set up the setting's premise with respect to linguistic stability, whi

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers . This post shares a number of magical weapons which are relatively rare, missile weapons! Firestar: 5 throwing knives +1, found in a custom belt with five sheaths on it for them.   doing 1d3 damage, +1 fire damage for each other Firestar knife already in the target.  When a third Firestar dagger is embedded in the same target, these knives explode, doing 3d6 fire damage, or double damage to zombies, and re-appear in their sheaths, while the sheaths of destroyed daggers turn black.  At dawn each day, any missing but intact daggers return to their sheaths.  Made for High Hill Halflings by Dwarven pyrotheurges during the war against the Zombie King. Radiant Short Bow: A +1 shortbow, +2 against undead.  When the bowstring is pulled back, an arrow appears where expected, but made of solid light, and illuminating an area 10 ft.

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers .  In relation to that, I would like to talk about the elements of generating a magical weapon with a touch more depth than Old Gary got into. Typical D&D weapons provide a benefit, but with no drawback.  This is great as far as it goes, but I believe a little more thought should be put into it, since each weapon should have the following elements: A numeric bonus An allegiance An intended enemy A weapon effect A side-effect First, I believe all magic weapons should have a numeric bonus, even if it's just +1 to hit and damage.  Call me old-fashioned. Second, gentle reader, all weapons should have some sort of magical effect, even if it's just an elemental damage bonus.  Weapons are made for a purpose, and are made by some person or group.  The makers of the weapon set the allegiance. That doesn't necessarily

This Month's Blog Carnival topic is  It Came From Beyond Time hosted by Xaosseed on Seed of Worlds . On Temporal Displacement Xaosseed points out that typical D&D settings frequently have the chronological displaced of one sort or another:  Ancient artifacts and tools of various sorts Travelers from a different time The remains of ancient civilizations All of these have come up in my only half-completed D23...24...25(?) mega-dungeon.  I'm sure there are about 8 of you (Hi Sam!) who want to read all about this, but if you do, you'll have to do it the proper way, and roll 3d6 down the line. What I think would be more beneficial, is to talk about why and how I have intended to use various elements.   The Elements of my D23 Here are the elements: An ancient temple and crypt complex of the Hagamido (frilled lizard people) that dominated this world an indeterminate tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an era freakishly similar to our own Jurassic period, but w

The Fortune-Teller, 1635 by Georges De La Tour (1593-1652, France) I'll start by letting you know I'm not an art critic, nor an art historian, I'm just a guy who has become interested in an awful lot of things through role-playing games. That said, I think this is a good example of a D&D -like (or maybe Blades in the Dark -like) piece of art that existed before that game did.   Why? His outfits were not exemplary of the time period.  In other words, he was doing the same shit D&D artists do: wardrobe for the story they wanted to tell.  From the second image "As was often the case with La Tour, the costumes are extraordinary creations.  They ought not to be taken as ... authentic clothing found in Lorraine around 1630". His detail in a given image varies from subject to subject in the work.  Some are intensely detailed, some are there, but not really extensively developed.  This strikes me as a good metaphor for writing in general, and RPGs more specificall

  Note : There are a lot of external links in this post. None of them should be affiliate links If they are, please let me know . Note2 : This has been bouncing around in my brain informally for a while, but putting it to pixel was prompted by Rook’s post on names on Beneath Foreign Planets as part of the RPG Blog Carnival .  There’s a lot of great material that comes from these prompts. I encourage you, dear reader, to check that out. Note3 : Link to the GDoc version this post was originally composed in. On Names One of the holes new Game Masters fall into while playing D&D-esque games is names. I’ll start with random NPC names first, to get the subject out of the way:  Make a d20 or d100 list of names for each gender, and for families.  Either stick it on the fourth panel of your DM screen, or pre-roll five of each, and stick those lists on your fourth panel. If you need a list of real world names, use an onomastikon .   Onomastikon “What is an onomasticon?” you ask, in Engli