Euxitikos's page

It‘s a shame that you‘re not moving to downstate NY; I‘d want to give you a call!

As a DM I always had my players write a background for their characters. It's not just a nice idea; it really is as vital as rolling out stats. There was a random NPC personality generator in the 2nd Edition DM book that I still use for new players to give them ideas for the range of emotions, traits, and other characteristics.
Currently I'm playing a elven neutral paladin whose left handed, a vegetarian, hates injustice, a little vain, loyal, et cetera with a whole background on why she is the way she is. This not only makes the character more fun to play but gives my DM loads of ammunition to make better more relevant campaigns.

I've played a DM for years, and although I consider myself to be harsh, I still do everything I can to keep my players alive, and I would never just target one player over another. I learned this lesson as a player whose DM favored one of the other players -his girlfriend. If I managed to get myself a better weapon, a nice treasure item or some advantage, she (the girlfriend's character) immediately had to have it. One session she and half the party, while riding on a Rok, snuck up on me, while I was in a forest (I was an elven ranger) and I had my raven companion in the air looking for just such a thing! No saddle (she was a halfling), no airborne riding proficiency (not even a land-based riding proficiency) or bow weapon proficiency, but she shot my raven while both were in flight. I think I killed her halfling thief a half dozen times before I finally just quit the game.

I enjoy religious infighting immensely. I play a made up (at least for 2nd Edition) character, which I call a bishop, but is essentially a neutral paladin. Balance being my ultimate objective, my DM has put in all sorts of conflicts between good vs. evil (at first) and lately more good vs. good. For the good v. evil, I would be forced to choose which held the dominant position (in a world-wide sense) and help the other, but I've found it increasingly difficult (and therefore a whole lot of fun to play) to pick a side in these new conflicts. The reasons for the fights are always realistic ones and could easily be taken out of a real world setting.

Not my first, not my last, but probably the most fun was a wild elf ranger named Euxitikos (unless you're Greek good luck with pronouncing it). He was obsessed with finding the mage that had killed his mother and while that led to world-wide chaos, it was little things like refusing to wear clothes, not knowing the concept of money ("What do you mean if I give this metal to that man he'll give me food? What is he an idiot?") and topped off with a chaotic neutral alignment, that made it good times for all.
My DM had so much fun with the adventures he wrote them into a trilogy and now is trying to get it published.

The quality of the game isn't the number of players but their experience in playing. We recently had one of our players move away, and we barely noticed the difference because he hardly did anything. If there wasn't anything to kill, he would pretty much put his head down. Now we have 3, but we're all good so if flows. Too many isn't good either, as I DM'd a group of my middle school students and they (all 7) went in completely different directions, it was a nightmare for me and it turned boring for them.

dyslexic doppleganger, who

This is a truly a great idea! Chain mail is so hard to draw that my characters won't wear it. Now I could go to the site listed in one of the replies, but I think it would help more gamers if it was something right in their hands. At least for me, drawing my own character makes me develop that character more. Whether it a personal trait, like being left handed, something with a story behind it, a wound or tattoo perhaps, or why they wear what they wear, a drawing section would be greatly appreciated.

I think that the various writers here have their points but I must side with DeadDMWalking:
"I'd rather see them continue to do what they're doing - provide a mix of races, classes, spells, feats..."

Not that Dragon shouldn't expand on existing materials as two other readers suggest, but if they only did that, they would lose readers as well as gain them. Dragon must balance between pleasing gamers that have been doing this for years and those who just picked up the game. To illustrate my point, let's look at the other editions of the D+D game. I DM a 3E campaign, but play in a 2E one. None of the 2E players ever picks up a Dragon because it isn't relevant to them anymore. If Dragon only puts in cutting-edge material and completely new concepts, they run the risk of losing those who are only just getting their D+D feet wet. Sure this might make Dragon seem like a watered-down version of what you'd like to see, but they're in business to make money and therefore need to cast their nets far.

Euxitikos

Though I read Dragon, most of my gaming is still done in 2nd Edition, where as both a DM and player, flaws and other such undesirables were taken by or given to players without any real in-game benefit. The true benefit of playing a character with flaws, being wanted by the law, or anything else is that those characters were a whole lot more fun to play. So I would weigh in that flaws should be serious ones and that they should outweigh any in-game benefit a character would receive.