Terror Island writing tip: Specify that characters have names. This makes them more relatable. (That’s the title text for that comic.)

I’m imagining something like:

Player: I ask the NPC for his name.

GM: He tells you his name.

There’s also online fantasy name generators. Which basically just do that, but you don’t need to bother with tables.

Elppin is a valid Troll name.

I like this version better, though I admit it’s less relevant to the meme.

What annoys me is when they don’t have weapons have distinct special abilities, but they do have different damage dice. You end up with a situation where some weapons are just better than others, and if you think a greataxe fits your character better than a greatsword, you have to choose between dealing less damage, having a weapon that doesn’t fit your character, or houseruling that weapons that don’t have other differences deal the same damage and ignoring all those stats.

Depends on the magic. Fireball was used in the seventh through fourteenth centuries, so that’s not anachronistic. But if you want to do elemental transmutation, that wasn’t discovered until 1896. You could have it in steampunk.

And how do you get people to collaborate? People have tried making governments based on the idea of everyone working together for the common good. It never ends well.

Ownership in general isn’t some fundamental inalienable right. It’s just that if you let people own things, you give them more incentive to make things. I think intellectual property rights are far too extensive, but if we didn’t have them at all, how would we pay for R&D? How would we pay for big budget games and movies? Maybe you’re happy contributing to openly licensed projects, but a lot of people have to pay for rent and raise a family, and can’t take the time to contribute to things like that even if they want to unless they have the money to support themselves.

That’s still way more imaginative than anything I can do.

That’s what all of it is. They just started naming everything after D&D monsters because they play D&D.

I’ve heard stories about players finding clues that the DM never intended to leave. Either stuff that wasn’t supposed to be important or plot holes. I think it might be good to have a rule that if the players find a certain amount of evidence, then regardless of the intended answer, they’re right. Honestly, I think it might be fun to not have an intended solution, and just keep making up details until they find enough plot holes.

I’d think of it as once to set up Chekhov’s gun, and once to use it. I think that’s a good rule, but it should be clarified in session zero.

Also, if anything depends on the environment, you don’t need rules like this and you can directly control it to make sure it doesn’t happen often enough to get boring.

Legally, they can’t keep you from publishing 5e content. You can even publish the 5e rules in their entirety so long as you change all the wording and pictures. I think they can keep you from publishing stuff involving their settings and characters, but you can still use their system.

If you trust the guy telling you this, you can just ask him which door leads to certain doom. If not, you have no way of knowing if you’re in a knights and knaves puzzle.

A common explanation is that there’s easy ways to ward against guns. But now we’re just doing Rowling’s job for her. Honestly, probably better than letting her do it.

Technically that was “life”. It’s just that conceptually it was hitpoints.

I probably would have had them mention a few people with that name, just to make sure they know you’re not abiding by the One-Steve Limit.

Look at older DnD editions and see if the monster or any similar monsters have extra abilities you can add

This. The Tarrasque had so many anti-cheese abilities in older editions. Now its best anti-cheese is running away, and even then there’s ways to keep up.

Reminds me of in DM of the Rings, when they thought they won after killing Saruman.

Is the answer Fly?