Posts Tagged "tao-of-dnd" from 2025

Good point. Yes, I meant "Winter Chase."

I should say "article" or "piece" instead of "story," I guess! On top of the editor's note in each issue, it seems more than half of the articles proper haven't really been "stories" -- Swann's recommendations for training, "The Grievance Path," the use of nettles, "The Soul at Rest," and "The Winter Yule" aren't...

The third story in this issue is the best piece you've written yet for the Lantern! My previous overall favorite was the pair of stories about tracking the goblins to their village, but now that has to take a close second place. Well done, Alexis, I enjoyed that immensely.

From the preview text it looks to be a hell of a read, Alexis. I am going to enjoy it first thing tomorrow morning so I can appreciate it when I'm not tired! Thank you for the Christmas present.

Here's hoping that people will read the Lantern for years to come!

I landed on this post again today and took a closer look at the table you posted. Could you please explain why the clerical bible (960 pages) ends up at about 1/10 the price of the codex, which appears to be made of exactly the same materials, has the same workmanship, and is ~1/6 the length?

I'm looking forward to the Christmas issue, Alexis! What a surprise. I thought we'd be waiting until January for the next one.

You do have tenacity. But we knew that.

It was clear after some twenty spells that the magic part of these books is a lost cause. I'm curious to see what you make of the treasure section... partially because, while I'm quite familiar with what you've done with monsters and spells during your D&D career, I feel I've seen very little of your philosophy for designing treasure.

Is anyone else seeing a weird cream-colored box at the bottom of this post? Screenshot here.

I am positively drowning at my job, but after tomorrow I will finally be able to breathe easy for a couple days. Breathing easy includes savoring the Lantern. I am very excited to crack open issue #3 and return to the year 1635!

Whew, I'm glad you found a new image generator! The Lantern would be great reading even without the art, but it wouldn't feel like a magazine without the ads. What program are you using?

Who among us has not leapt into a new project and made strides in a flow state, only to find that reattaining that magic becomes more difficult over time?

Needing two months instead of one to turn out novel work of superb quality is hardly a failure. Take your time. I'll wait patiently and pay happily for as much of the Lantern as I can get, on whatever schedule you adopt.

Yep, that link works.

I hope your emergency is over soon and everyone in the family ends up healthy.

The Lulu link gives me a 404 not found page. When that's fixed I'll send it around to my nerdy friends. Some of them previously expressed that they really liked your work, such as the Jousting Piglet menu, but they only wanted to buy PDFs, not something physical. Hopefully this will be more up their alley.

COOL! The Lantern is such an exciting project, Alexis.

This is wonderful work, Alexis. This post and the previous one are such an excellent characterization of the DM's role, with clear definitions and information one can act on. Your description of the centrality of the dual narrative is especially apt; I would like to see you continue to expand on ways to shrink or grow the gulf between what is presented and what is actual.

This kind of thing is exactly what is so obviously ABSENT from published RPG manuals' "how to DM" sections. So obviously absent and, one would think, so obviously necessary... if anyone but you and the rest of us reading this would just take the art form as seriously as it deserves.

*Some* time, yes, but clearly not enough. And it occurred to me a couple days ago that what really would have helped would have been to mock-run the combat!

THANK YOU for putting words to precisely what I had trouble with at my running last weekend. The players scouted out a goblin hamlet, made a plan to assault it and we played out 2/3 of the combat. I was proud of my players for being so clever with their tactics (I won't get into it.)

Thank you, Alexis. This post comes at a good time. Growing up, I never played sports and only occasionally did organized group/team activities. Lately I've been verrrrrrry sloooowly learning the ropes of soccer, after having spent the last couple years learning to appreciate the game as a spectator with some old roommates.

It's hard as shit. I can hardly run. I pass and dribble and shoot like an idiot. But a new friend around the corner is showing me the basics, and there are some dudes at work who organize pickup games every week --
hell or high water I'm gonna start going, no matter how bad I am, and try my best to be a credit to the team.

Please accept my congratulations on 4,000 posts, Alexis. I hope I speak for a number of us when I say that for as long as you write, I'll be here to read and reread with abandon.

With regard to the subject at hand, reading: I and my game have certainly profited by reading extensively in nonfiction as I've come to adopt a historical game world over the last few years. There's just so much to KNOW about the world, in different eras and different countries of the past. I appreciate your reminder to reach back into the world of fiction more frequently. I've read the books listed in the middle of the post, but I'd never heard of the Forster or Stendhal ones.

I certainly took you as the starting line. Took me literally years to get good enough to run a game inspired by your designs and principles, but I haven't looked back!

This post continues where the last one left off.

On the subject of dragon breath, and how a character dying to that might feel the situation to be less arbitrary than dying somewhat more ... anonymously ... from the proposed system of mass-combat casualties. Such a feeling would presumably stem from how, in an ordinary (non-mass) combat, the players would control their individual characters with all the usual micromanagement: taking painstaking preparations before the battle itself, arranging the lines of defense just so, cooperating as best they could in the heat of battle... and as such, whatever the success or failure of the party's side in the dragon fight, unless the DM had truly botched things or resorted to bullshit-like fudging the players ought to generally feel like they had earned the outcome themselves.

For those who need encouragement to click pages they've probably seen before: Alexis's doing a lot of new writing on the wiki right now, and it's worth checking out.