I feel like the end of 3rd edition and most of 4th edition was All the drow! All the time!
Started with the City of the Spider Queen adventure (evocative, but not a good adventure) and the War of the Spider Queen novels (some good, others not so much).
One of the many things I like about Star Wars is how much of the background stuff is still inspiring.
I think one of Star Wars RPG books in the early 2000s ran an ad campaign with shots of crowds in Star Wars scenes, with an arrow "What's this guy's story?"
That's as mean as it is true.
Maybe go really oldschool again and use drow.
Same reason so many legendary sorcerers have giant gems for eyes or hearts.
Shit, I got to read that whole thing again.
Scheduling
"It is an older meme, Sir, but it checks out."
Of all time!
What a grand and intoxicating innocence.
This actually is a valuable lesson for GMs.
Playing RPGs is not about having the players act out the adventure you want them to have. It's all about the players creating the adventure they want to have.
While I like ranger type characters, the ranger class is the one that could never justify its own existence or explain it's niche. It's always been done better by a multiclass fighter/rogue.
Any time I'm reading a new RPG and come to the section on skills, the one question that always comes up at some point is "But how does it want to handle the whole party sneaking past guards together?"
The most simple approach is that every PC makes a skill check to avoid being seen by all of the guards, and that every guard makes a skill check to notice any one of the PCs. If only one of the guards manages to roll better than only one of PCs, the whole thing is up and the players are discovered.
And when you have four to six PCs and four to six guards, even the PCs are all much better at sneaking than the guards are at noticing, it becomes statistically very rare for the players to ever get past guards unnoticed.
What other approaches to handling such a situation with skill checks have you come across or come up with that makes sneaking past guards with the whole party a more feasible option for the players with a decent chance for success?
"Huhuhuhur!"
I'm on shrooms!