Samantha Patri's Blog

This idea that somehow magic and technology are at odds in fantasy settings is, in our mind, incredibly lazy thinking. We had a long talk with a friend about this, and we spent the time basically pointing out just how unlikely it would be for magic to be an actual hindrance for technology unless the game master / world builder made the two forces artificially hinder one another in some fashion (like the idea that technology doesn't work around magic / magic doesn't work around technology). He believed that with magic, people wouldn't put the time and effort into developing technology when magic could do it 'easier'. We pointed out a few things that put the lie to that: Magic is generally restricted to the middle or upper class. Magic tends to be 'local', with a small area of effect. Magic use is restricted to specific individuals. The use of technology can generally be taught and shared. Technology has a longer 'duration' than magic tends to. Technol...

Food for Thought We've seen a number of people - especially game designers it seems - think Good is uninteresting or weak . That evil is a lot more interesting for game play. Whether this be character classes, abilities and options, or simply entire races. Monster manuals? Filled with evil stuff. Opponents and foils? Evil. Who get all the cool powers? Evil. Who performs world-shaking magic? Evil. In most adventures, Evil is rarely the underdog. The PCs are left scrabbling to deal with whatever plot Evil has come up with. We find this boring . Very, very boring. Time and time again it's 'the weak heroes have to band together to stop the all-powerful bad guy'. Here's the thing. It's unrealistic. It's a tired trope. It's overused. We want to see Good creatures given the same treatment Evil creatures are. We want to see powers and abilities given to Good creatures that are on par with the Evil creatures that are depicted. And we want to see th...