Recent content by MarkB

It reminds me of the Discworld novel Soul Music, which I managed to read cover-to-cover without ever getting the "I could swear he's Elvish" reference (I think I finally picked up on it in the animated movie).

Regardless of whether we've seen it as a vision, Pike choosing in that moment to knowingly sacrifice his future is what his character arc throughout the show has been about. It would be odd not to conclude that arc.

Not top faves for me, but Free Guy and Ready Player One are worth putting in the mix as being more parodic / referential of video gaming culture in general.

A full 80-piece set of Heroes of Faerun dwarven-crafted figurines, still in their original packaging, scattered across several floors and tucked in amongst a whole literal hoard of other stuff. Worth an absolute fortune to the right collector, but only if they can gather up the full set.

Only when talking about it tunneling through solid rock, which is understandable. Through earth I'd tend to consider it optional.

Unrumble! The first thing that occurs to me is the players trying to game the system - i.e. if any of the guards start out dead or badly wounded, the players avoid attacking them so that they don't get healed. This is going to require a lot of player buy-in - quite often players are more...

Boosting its speed and burrow speed would be a start, these things should be using ambush tactics, rising up to spit some acid and then burrowing away, but they don't have the speed to do so very effectively. The trickiest part of fighting them should be pinning them down before they retreat...

That also allows for some playing with the concept - is he a centaur cursed to turn into a nightmare, or a nightmare cursed to think he is a centaur?

I'd fall back on the old "soul must be free and willing to return" clause. Once infected by the parasite, your soul is bound inextricably to the Absolute and the only way it may freely return is if you allow the parasite to be resurrected along with the body. You could even make it that a live...

Reminds me of Skyrim, where simple potions are easy enough to make that you see health and stamina potions set out at peoples' dinner tables. In D&D healing potions are too expensive to be so ubiquitous, but maybe these are diluted versions that only heal a hit point or two - that'd be good...

Not the OP and I don't remember which book it is, but at one point Pratchett likens out-of-town malls to parasites, feeding upon the cities they adjoin and slowly sucking the life out of them (with the whole thing becoming disturbingly more literal within the setting of the Discworld...

"Fantasy mall" makes me think "bazaar" and there are plenty of historical examples of those. Set it up as a large plaza or promenade, with the buildings bordering it containing the most prestigious and long-standing shops. But what used to be the open ground between them has gradually been...

The first question is, would you do the whole "de-powered by the tadpoles" thing to knock the party back down to low level after DIA? That happens in BG3 to characters like Wyll and Karlach, and is a good way to reconcile their high-level backstories with their current low levels. But that sort...

I don't think it will change your mind about Godzilla movies in general, but it is an excellent examination of post-war Japan that happens to make very good use of a giant monster to help explore its themes.

It varies a lot. Some encounters are very self-contained, others are in larger areas. Even in places that are one large area, like the goblin fortress interior, while it's possible for fights to spill into each other it's also possible to keep them fairly isolated. The main thing that tabletop...