I think those were probably an outgrowth of seeing how much attention and revenue that came out of Crisis on Infinite Secret Wars.

Some versions of the game have a lot more monsters floating around or a ton more treasure, both of which impact the game. But warning players up front about the differences — “guys, this is old school, so there may or may not be a cave with 100 well-armed trolls in it later on, so running is always a good option, FYI”…

Some versions of the game have a lot more monsters floating around or a ton more treasure, both of which impact the…

Read the reviews and questions for signs of dubiousness.

Read the reviews and questions for signs of dubiousness.

I’ve been teaching a bunch of newbies recently. Even the math pros aren’t yet able to recognize any of them other than the D4 and D6 at a glance yet. It’s not an unusual issue for people just learning the game, especially if there’s a ton of dice on the table.

I’ve been teaching a bunch of newbies recently. Even the math pros aren’t yet able to recognize any of them other…

Especially since everyone knows that real men are all about eating dangerously spicy food.

Yeah, it’s shady as hell. If you look at who’s answering the questions about the product on that Amazon link, it’s not Wizards who are selling this.

More likely it’s someone who’s seen that the regular Starter Set is, at least temporarily, hard to find while Hasbro pushes the Stranger Things version and is cashing it.

Yeah, it’s shady as hell. If you look at who’s answering the questions about the product on that Amazon link, it’s no…

The good news is they’re almost certainly going to blow the rest of their fortune on cocaine and Bitcoin.

Note, I mean the official Starter Set sold by WotC, not that dubiously more expensive set that’s got extra third party junk added onto it that Eric linked to.

Here’s the official D&D Starter Set. Here’s the Stranger Things version. You can get the original one for less than $20 most of the time on Amazon and is all you…

Note, I mean the official Starter Set sold by WotC, not that dubiously more expensive set that’s got extra third…

That set he linked above is from a third-party vendor. The Amazon reviews for all the stuff they add on are mixed at best. I’d definitely just go with one of the two boxed sets from WotC myself.

That set he linked above is from a third-party vendor. The Amazon reviews for all the stuff they add on are mixed at…

DriveThruRPG/RPGNow is great for this, although just Googling “OSR” (for “Old School Renaissance” or other words starting with “R”) will point you to all the cleaned-up versions of the old school rule sets. I do think all of those require a bit more up-front knowledge than a newcomer might have, since they’re…

DriveThruRPG/RPGNow is great for this, although just Googling “OSR” (for “Old School Renaissance” or other words…

Eeh, I’m going to disagree somewhat. This is a pretty expensive list for newbie DMs.

First off, the Starter Set (either original flavor or the new Stranger Things flavor) is superlative, with a great, stripped-down ruleset that gives you all the basics and an adventure. The adventure in the Starter Set is easily the…

Eeh, I’m going to disagree somewhat. This is a pretty expensive list for newbie DMs.

First off, the Starter Set…

Taller. Everyone but him is actually standing on a box, Tom Cruise style.

Two years in, Vanilla WoW also had Onyxia’s Lair, Zul’Gurub, Naxxaramas, the Dragons of Nightmare, both AQ raids and cross-realm battlegrounds (AB, AV and WSG. Plenty to do.

Holy shit. They only have 3,600 Instagram followers. Lots of high school students have more than that.

And they got fucking written up in Travel + Leisure.

They sure can do the self-promotion game, that’s for sure.

It’s building a brand by which to sell other, cheaper, crap.

Very few of Gwyneth Paltrow’s audience live her lifestyle, but she can still sell them the image. And jade vagina eggs.

See, I love Maus — to the extent one can love something that makes me want to lie down in a dark room and be sad for a very long time — but I don’t know.

First, it started being serialized in 1980, before being collected in 1991. So if we go by the start date, it doesn’t work as a demarcation point, since it basically…

More Archie Panjabi in everything, please.

You don’t see that in a continuum going from the CCA reformation, including DC and Marvel’s drug addiction stories, more grown-up mainstream horror comics including Swamp Thing and, past X-Men/New Teen Titans, to the Born Again/Batman: Year One/Dark Knight Returns/Watchman years?

I think it’s an outgrowth of what was…

More mature comics, including Dark Knight Returns, the classic Vertigo titles, etc., seem more like the natural outgrowth of the 1970s comics, rather than something new. (Heck, I was reading Spectacular Spider-Man through the 1980s, and they were getting more mature all the time, despite never getting the same level…

The second incarnation of the X-Men didn’t fundamentally change the industry, although it did pull it out of a financial tailspin. That’s not a great demarcation point.

I think the argument of the reform and weakening of the CCA makes more sense, since that paves the way for the more mature storytelling of the X-Men…