let's talk about Magic in D&D! and not cards, but arcane nattering with wibbly gestures and spidery words and throwing little balls of bat shit wrapped around sulfur at people and watching them explode

so back in the 50s, there were a lot of pulp novels of adventure, sci fi, and early fantasy. Among them were the fantasy short stories of Jack Vance, collected in a pulp novel called "The Dying Earth"

In these stories, there were wizards who could use magic, and in order to use it they had to memorize lengthy and complex spell formulas, triggered by a word or phrase. And once they used a spell, it was gone forever, until they memorized it again

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Shivam, Friend Collector

@ghirapurigears

1 Jul

this is absolutely spot on perfect.

lightfoot, btw, is a subrace of Halfling. The most common type, basically built to be a tolkien hobbit with the serial numbers filed off.

and if you've ever played a video game you know what sneak attacks are. creep up behind a person with your thief/rogue/dps, roll, and do more damage because you caught them off guard. the three dice tiers here reflect how well the rogue rolled

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Shivam, Friend Collector

@ghirapurigears

1 Jul

Hell yes, the king of source books had arrived! The Volo's Guides were my favorites to read, because they were literally all just flavor and spice you could add to the texture of your games. They read like in world travel guides more than Stat packs

Volo's guides were either books of monsters, magical hodgepodgery, or setting guides to the various kingdoms and regions of Faerun

@Wizards_DnD

Recently @Wizards_DnD put out the fantastic Volo's guide to monsters, which I still need to pick up some day

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Shivam, Friend Collector

@ghirapurigears

15 May

i think what is happening, and this is probably obvious, is that the demographics of magic players have shifted slowly but significantly over the past 10 years+, and wotc has finally decided to shift their spotlight

and the magnifying glass that pointed square at the specific format of the tournament grinder/pro player was cool for an era, but when you look outside that lens, you realize the gigantic ocean of people you missed when you were looking at this tidepool

and again, i love watching and experiencing the pro scene! but for years and years, they ignored the casual side, figuring we'd just follow along and catch up, and we kinda basically did, but it turns out that it's just easier for folks to play with their pals than on tour

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Shivam, Friend Collector

@ghirapurigears

13 May

i'm in a weird place. I'm a casual, and hell, i'm one of the faces of commander, and yet i have a ton of friends who are top tier pros, who work behind the scenes at events as commentary or staff, and like, this sucks

I want my friends to succeed, to be happy, to be paid and get to do cool jobs that are super fun. I also want my community to have events that allow us to gather and share our love of magic. I just don't understand why this has to be either/or.

but i think the core here is that the top segment of pro basically aren't going to have a train to ride anymore. And that genuinely sucks for the folks who have built their lives and careers around this. But like, that's the MPL and Rivals, which is what, 100 ppl tops?

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