Elemental Reductions

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