Arianism was most certainly NOT "default" early church mode. 🤣

Great stuff, Rex! 👊☝️

The Catholic Church was not known for their tolerance in those days. 😅 I honestly think this was not due to religious reasons but due to the corrupt influences within the church and their need for control. I know little of John Calvin or Calvinism but that sort of treatment doesn't seem to be the way they work.

This is some excellent advice! One thing I'd add is this: Don't stress! This is supposed to be fun! Some DMs are born some are made, however skills are developed through time and mistakes. You get better the more you do it.

The Homeric epics are great source materials for inspiration. Even beyond ideas for adventures, directly, they're great templates for seeding the campaign world with its own historic tales, to give the setting greater depth. One of my favorite characters is Ajax. Best!

I haven't read this in more years than I care to think about! 🤣

Just wanted to comment to help your channel, Bro! Never read this and might not....kinda outside my wheelhouse so to speak. 😋👊🤓

Sounds like something I could either rip a couple of ideas from or get inspired by. I'm not a fan of AI art....I guess it's just a grognard thing with me. Anyhooze, it does look interesting. I may need to look into getting a copy eventually.

I really wish I had the free time to take part in this. Good luck with it and I'll watch any live plays/recaps you do!

Sounds like fun; I would love to play! I anticipate being available on Saturday evening, from 6 PM onward, at least through February. I usually run a group on Saturday afternoon at the local library, during the dark months, but they close at 5 PM, and it's only a few minutes away. I don't have a Discord account, and would prefer to keep it that way; so, this would be a good opportunity for me to actually play in an online game.

The read through and play for that Basic example, was cool! THX for it!

Hey, Bro, just realized that you should switch your streaming perspective to reverse the image, if you know what I mean. Everything you show is on the channel is reversed, so not readable, since it's backwards. It's not a biggie, just saying. 🤓👊

You don't have to show your appreciation. Just keep rockin' D&D.

I love the 3rd edition too....no nods to they/them and such. Sounds fun, Bro! If foul language is removed in the entirety, I'll be willing to try it to the best of my ability with ya. It might not be every single Saturday a month though, and I am always on-call as a Chaplain. When are you thinking of starting this? Anglovan would be cool! Any differences in race, class, etc?

This sounds very cool. I won't be able to join but I look forward to listening to the actual play. Also, I should send you a link to my discord. We got some people looking for games and, of course, you would always be welcome to join any games there.

This actually sounds like a lot of fun! If I have time I'd love to be a part of it.

I agree that there needs to be a balance between "putting the fun in fun house" and trying to make the dungeon as naturalistic as the wilderness. I mainly try to focus on have some good ideas for what allows all the monsters to co-exist, or at least what keeps them from completely eliminating some monster groups between visits from intrepid adventurers. I, too, try to make the dungeon spaces appropriate for the species that built the space as it's home. Even for smaller creatures, like kobolds, I'll still use something like 4 feet wide by 6 feet high for a basic corridor, and will bump the ceiling up to 8-10 feet in "special" places, like a throne room. That said, I play kobolds a little like discount dwarves for evil lair builders; they have slightly lower mining & delving capabilities, to be sure, but can excavate "safe" dungeons, with complex and/or complicated features. Hmm...that could be a reason why they often seem so nomadic to outside observers.... Cheers!

I'm with you....Ya gotta have balance. My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

Good video. I think Dungeon Ecology design has taken a hit lately with the gonzo mythological underworld types lately. It is nice to see a reasonable take on this. I haven't seen too many of your mapping videos. If you haven't read it, I suggest taking a look at Veins of the Earth. I call it "Spelunking with Monsters." It takes a very realistic look at how caverns are designed. You might find it interesting.

Have you ever wondered why kobolds, goblins and similar small humanoids create rooms that are comfortable for a human to stand and fight in? It is almost like they want to be killed...

How do I get a copy?

If those are 5 ft. squares, those constructed walls are looking mighty thin... a party with a few pickaxes could hack their way through them!

Very professional-looking cartography! 😎👍

1:00 Echoing pond All noises and sounds from the players echoes back much longer than it should. Battle cries and so on heard and as you get closer it becomes clear you are hearing your own. It is coming not a echo that is all around you like a cave would as you can hear your own echo but it’s like it is rebounding off the water. Perception check success: you feel as if you are being perceived by something. Perception check fail: you are the source of your own perception and you can never be outside of your own perception. Intelligence check: it is mundane water collected strangely in a cave. Intelligence fail: this looks like water pooled inside of a cave. Patrons: what do you want me to say? Demons: oh, go on uncover the mysteries of this pool while i uncover the mysteries as to why it fascinates you so. Dungeon boss: we live in a cave why should i be concerned for every droplet of water. Players: we can’t… there has to be something about this, what are we looking for?! Edit You look into the water, your reflection looks out of the water.

🎵Oops, Rex did it again He drew some cool art And made a dungeon 🎵

The finished product looks GREAT!

Really awesome work, Bro!! 👊🤓

Good looking map! Nothing looks more like "real" D&D than a hand drawn & inked map.

I should point out that when I ink the grid, I don't ink the intersection of the squares. I feel that it keeps it from getting confused with a wall.

Excellent video and discussion! I feel in a very similar way as due to my Christian worldview. In regards to clerics, with the game I run all of my PC clerics are based off of the various monastic orders of the Catholic Church...complete with the obligations of oath, tithes, penance confession and etc. failure to play along these lines will result in the loss of the PCs "God Given" powers until one does due penance and goes back to the good ol' straight and narrow. Also, I don't do clerical "spells" as such....I refer to them as prayers. The cleric has access to every one listed in the book appropriate for their level. I use a point system....the idea of spells/prayers being memorized x amount of times never made much sense to me. Anyhooze before I get too much off base, I feel that very real "good and evil" should be present in games as it is in the real world.

Great video, Bro! You're 💯 spot-on! 👊🤓Thanks for the shout-out!

First, Bro, you're exactly right...100%! Being both well-read and well-grounded in your Biblical worldview is really cool to hear! And, this also goes hand-in-hand with the fact that there are evil monsters/races in gaming, or should be. And without that, what in the dadgum world are you even doing! Great video by the way! 👊🤓☝️

I will die on my hill for 18:21

Your not wrong atheists are not absolute evil but they're not far off

Tolkien based his Orcs on the Huns (Asians). The movie versions were played by Pacific Islanders/black people. I use a similar alignment system to Dungeons & Dragons, except I define neutrality and chaos differently, and use real-world examples. D&D neutrals act like double agents. My neutrals act like rock stars in the Playboy Mansion, lol! D&D chaotics behave like psychotic people. My chaotic people act like entrepreneurs, activists, rebellious teens, criminals, or mischievous children. My chaotic monsters behave like wildlife.

This is a topic I've been thinking about myself lately. It's been in my half-done pile for a while, and was going to be my next topical video; but, I've been sidetracked by offline stuff for most of the last month. I definitely do think most of the people who are against using alignment in D&D approach it as concrete and binding. I do think Gary was unambiguously biased...in that he was definitely pro human. As for unrepentant and entirely evil species, there certainly was an intent to let players have some hacking-and-slashing, corpse-looting, homeland invading fun, without getting too caught up in how those kinds of decisions would be viewed in the physical world. It was meant, in part, to spare the players from the very kinds of anguishing over moral turpitude that we see in the contemporary reaction against alignment. Additionally, the contemporary players vehemently reject pretty much everything that they think might place some sort of constraint on how they player their characters in the moment. Aside from the convenience factor of shoehorning entire species of monsters into a fairly restrictive socio-moral model, I think there's an element of necessity to it. We simply have no baseline for how a planet with hundreds of sapient specie (maybe even more than a thousand) would actually function in terms of social structure and inter-specific morality. Cheers, for the shoutout! I hope to get back to more actively doing stuff on KZbin soon.

Law and Chaos in the Poul Anderson sense is all you need. Simple good and evil. Gygax deserves respect, but muddied things and opened the hobby up to "its what my character would dos" with Chaotic Good, Pure Neutral, etc.

What is evil? To the mice, the cat is evil, since it hunts and kills them, sometimes taking its sweet time in finally administering a death blow. To the farmer, the cat is at least useful, because it kills the mice that would eat his grain. To their neighboring people, the Aztecs were evil, since they captured those people and sacrificed them to their gods. Likewise, the Mongols were viewed as a scourge upon civilization, as murderous, merciless killers. Is evil an inborn or immutable characteristic, or is it a choice, or perhaps an inclination or character flaw? I tend to agree with Solzhenitsyn, that the line between good and evil runs through the center of every human heart. But what about intelligent non-human creatures? Arguably, there can be creatures that see us as nothing but a potential food source, or as being fit for nothing more than slave labor. Perhaps as potential subjects for medical experimentation. Evil, in the eyes of humanity, and as likely as not, unrepentantly so. As far as alignments, well, I find those to be more a hindrance than an aid. The whole need for such alignments comes from having spells to detect "evil." Which effectively makes evil an immutable characteristic that can be tested for, like blood type. The rather simplistic magic system led to making certain assumptions that became codified in the rest of the game, and the setting in which it takes place. It turns good and evil into near absolutes, like quantum states, either one or the other, but never in between. That required re working, given the range of human nature and behavior, leading us the system we see currently in use. Which I see as an attempted solution to a problem that need never have existed in the first place.

I perfer primary motivation (curiosity, power) and goals.

Coding exists and isn't a stupid argument. Those races aren't "stand ins for", the real world races they are coded as tribal Africans. You understand coding. think of any male cartoon character, now put him in a pink dress acting efeminine and flapping his wrist. The character in that situation is Coded gay none of the actions were homosexual yet you get an abundantly clear picture of gayness because those things change the coding of the character

I stopped using Alignment in our D&D games in the 80's when we started dabbling with RuneQuest and GURPS. Have not missed it and our games have been richer for it.