Recent content by mockman1890

Hey everyone! So I'm an illustrator (Swordfish Islands, D&D walkthrough maps for WotC) and game designer (Dreamlands RPG, Mangaka, assorted D&D adventures such as The Barber of Silverymoon and Six Faces of Death). I wanted to shamelessly announce my new DMsGuild D&D5e product... Dungeon...

I think basically the way you make pirates palatable PCs in a roleplaying game (or palatable protagonists in any medium) is, you depict 'the authorities' as so evil and corrupt that the outlaw pirates (at least the PC pirates) are the good guys. This holds true from the Pirates of the Caribbean...

It's a fair question. Possibly...! It is kind of unfair how humans get all the (Forgotten Realms) 'cultures' in the 5e PHB and the other races usually are monocultures (or 2- or 3-cultures if we consider, say, different kinds of halflings to be cultural distinctions). With regard to the "races...

I am not trying to be obnoxious but genuinely want to ask: in what way can one have made-up 'races' at all in fantasy (or science fiction) without cultural stereotypes that would be unacceptable when talking about real races? Sure, you may want to leave open the option that all dwarves are not...

It sounds like you're saying fictional Othering exacerbates real-life Othering tendencies. I fundamentally disagree and say that fiction/games can be a place to safely express Othering tendencies, much as it can be a place to safely express "chopping somebody's head off." Also, Othering...

(changed my original post because it was dashed off) I mean, I don't agree. The same idea that 'orcs are people, not monsters, so they shouldn't be depicted as innately evil' could just as easily apply to mindflayers, or demons and devils, or neogi, or any intelligent monster. The definition of...

This argument reminds me of the fact that Ta-Nehisi Coates played D&D and once referred to Trump (insultingly) as "orcish". By which I mean, whether orcs have racist echoes of PoC in some contexts, clearly that wasn't how Coates thought of them and probably wasn't how orcs were used in his...

We really don't know exactly what the changes WotC requested were. Maybe it wasn't entirely fantasy-race-related; the words "love potion" are mentioned too, and if WotC decided they absolutely couldn't feature a love-potion plot, that might've been too major a change for the Hickmans to get behind.

Also, what a difference a few years makes, considering that in 2016 the Hickmans gave their blessing to "Curse of Strahd" and even wrote an introduction to it.

I really shouldn't ask, but what is the misogyny WotC is accused of? (per Hickman's statement) Obviously I know about the Orion Black and racism situation, but I'm unaware of any misogynistic practices or scandals involving WotC. (EDIT: Oh right, it's about what's-his-face, because of the novel...

Haha... the "D&D has piss-poor new user experience" comment is just exactly the thing to start a 250+ comment argument on a D&D site. XD ...okay, I admit, I'm curious what she means by this, since I can think of more than one meaning. Hopefully she'll say more about it somewhere. Honestly...

Thanks for the article. Since a few people were saying they can't handle dark subject matter in the current depressing world climate, I just wanted to say I'm still 100% down with it. I'm still watching apocalyptic & horror movies just like always. Different people cope with life problems in...

These are pretty cool ideas!! I'd love to see them written up with some 5e stats.