The Robgoblin

Surely everyone has a take on dragons. Here's mine. Dragons follow their own morality, perhaps not quite so alien as that of the creatures of the Void, but certainly not one that humans might understand. In dealing with dragons, it is perhaps best not to draw their attention. Does it especially matter to a rat whether it is in a laboratory, the hands of a sadistic torturer, or the home of a loving owner? Could it even tell? So it is, when treating with dragons. Even a dragon which appears to be helpful is likely to view you as a useful curiosity... for now. There are four Great Dragons: the Red, Yellow, Black, and Green. None is associated with Good, or Evil, or Order, or Chaos, in a way that mortals might understand. Lesser dragons may display some combination of these characteristics, and are correspondingly weakened by the dilution of their ancestors' blood. It is of course the Yellow Dragon that is most feared, though in truth all inspire dread. Some hold that the Black and...

Story time. In my first D&D campaign (Fifth Edition, of course), my character acquired a cool sword early on from a character who left the party, and I used it for a long time. Then I acquired a second cool sword. The first one had useful powers against demons. The second one, against giants. There was an interesting choice to be made about which sword I used depending on the situation. Of course, my character wanted to not have to make that choice, and just have one cool sword that combined both. I suggested this to the GM, expecting to have a short arc where I'd have to find a smith with sufficient skills in the arcane arts - probably the elven smith who'd become hostile to us earlier in the campaign. I'd then have to persuade them to do the work, and likely do some kind of favour for them by way of payment. It would have been a fun follow-up, after my character's main motivation for adventuring had been resolved. Instead, the next time we encountered a blacksmith...

It's fairly likely that your favourite fantasy roleplaying game has, buried in the rules somewhere, an assumption that you're using six-mile hexes at the basis for overland travel. This assumption is almost as old as the genre, and is present even if you're using a ruleset that doesn't explicitly use hex maps. Ever wonder why D&D 5th Edition has paces of 18, 24 or 30 miles a day? That's 3, 4 or 5 hexes! The idea that they're the 'ideal' scale goes back to at least 2009, and Steamtunnel's oft-cited In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex . And that idea has merit, it's certainly mathematically convenient. But we don't make maps for the convenience of mapmakers: we make them to describe territory. The 6-mile hex does a poor job of that, because it is too big. This has been remarked upon before, of course. Most recently by Eric Diaz at Methods & Madness , but also by Skerples at  Coins and Scrolls . Both authors use European cities as their referenc...