Somewhere on reddit recently, I saw someone casually mention the different types of fantasy implied by The Hobbit vs Lord of the Rings . And it set my mind spinning on isolating and bringing forth the world of The Hobbit' s Wilderland. What I mean is the Wilderland as seen in The Hobbit , without any reference to the rest of the legendarium. Let's forget the sagas of the Silmarillion  and the detailed tapestries of Lord of the Rings  and dwell for a moment simply on the world of Wilderland we are exposed to in The Hobbbit.  It's actually a rather different place. It's a world where Gandalf (correct pronunciation: "Jandalf") is just another wandering wizard, where the Necromancer is just an evil warlock in a tower in the dark forest, where Elrond is just a wise elf lord encountered on the journey. Wilderland is a world of goblins under misty mountains, trolls in the woods, giants in the mountains, shape-shifting woodsmen, capricious elves, good hearted but al...

As an adult, my favorite class is the regular fighter, though I did enjoy playing a paladin straight for a campaign's worth. As a teenager, I did not mirror myself in glory fantasies or related all that well my own masculinity (so fighter wasn't all that for me) and power fantasies were rather fleeting for me (and so Wizards, while cool, were also a fleeting fascination for me). What I really related to was the second edition Bard. Not because I saw myself as a budding minstrel, but for all the non-entertainment aspects of the class. A jack-of-all-trades, extending even to magic, who seems to adventure, not for glory or power, but simply for the sake of adventure. That was something that resonated a lot with my teenage self. Reflecting on this today, makes me think on the strange fit the Bard is setting-wise.  This bard is about to rock your world with his flute and fat shortsword. I mean, what's the deal with a minstrel that knows magic and a bit of everything? Do all   ...

I've reviewed the Forgotten Realms as a setting before.  To sum up the issues with the setting: In its present incarnation it's an unmanageable mess, plain simple. The tabletop equivalent of the Marvel universe - Overburdened with an absolute immensity of 'canon' , loads of 'story line' developments that have no relation to gamers, universe-wide 'crossover events', desperate retcons and a handful of mary sue novel characters blazing a trail of shit through the setting that no one cares about.  WotC have done what they can to salvage the wreckage in 5e. An ill defined event to normalize the wreck that was 4e, move the timeline forward to let the passage of time erase as much of the canon baggage as possible, be intentionally vague about what has actually changed and otherwise just leave the setting the fuck alone, so gamers can walk around without tripping over 'setting lore' at every step. It's ok I guess, as a cardboard background f...

NB. If you're only here for the cool new map, it's at the bottom of the post. Primeval Thule is a "sword and sorcery" pastiche setting that takes its primary inspiration from Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft - For D&D. It has books for 5e, 4e, pathfinder, 13th Age and Savage Worlds. Here I will be reviewing the book for 5e. Despite the strong influence these authors have had on the D&D genre, D&D settings who take these as a primary and overriding influence are rare, so a setting adopting a more purist interpretation of these is a welcome addition. The concept art for the setting certainly makes an evocative intro: What other settings might compare to such an effort? Setting to one side pastiche OSR efforts (such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea), then Wilderlands of High Fantasy has a lot of S&S, but its (delightful) kitchen sink approach means it can not be considered a...

One of the blog entries I find myself returning to is the one I wrote about  Dragonlance being a unique sandbox setting . I ran it as a kid and it's a campaign I'd love to run again as an adult. Here are my thoughts on where it all went wrong for Dragonlance and how to fix it to run a proper campaign that feels  like a dragonlance campaign. My main frustration with Dragonlance as a setting is how unrealised its gaming potential is.  There's the issue of the novels, obviously, and the iffiness of how to set them aside in a way that makes the world more open to player characters.  And how the original adventure that mirror the novels kind of ends up being the only story worth telling in the setting. It's not of course, but the setting has continuously struggled with its identity as a gaming  world in light of this. How to escape the novels and make the setting itself greater than the original adventure path? They've tried, but the attempts have bee...

I've written about Greyhawk before without ever telling the story of my own relationship with the setting. I came to it rather late, in the late 90s when it had been long discontinued (even the From the Ashes  reboot had been discontinued), at a time where I considered myself savvy in the worlds of Dragonlance (my first D&D world), Forgotten Realms (cool things in there, but why is it that  popular?), Dark Sun and Ravenloft, and the only thing I knew of Greyhawk was as the red-headed stepchild of TSR. My first real encounter with Greyhawk though was through a Danish magazine, SAGA, written back in 1992, that did an "intro to greyhawk" article titled "Greyhawk - The oldest of all worlds" that caught my imagination. Scan of the original article from Saga #14 Click here to read an English translation in pdf This seemed like a setting that had room for all the things I expected from a genuine D&D fantasy setting. More room for medievalism, more k...