Elven blade dancers combining martial skill and magic are pretty popular in D&D.  The recent Neverwinter campaign sourcebook brought it back (though Swordmages were already around, their focus on Int/Str or Int/Con didn’t really fit the previous lore).

Thinking about elven blade dancers though, I can’t decide how it would look like.  A martial art form that combines dance with weapon fighting.  Would it be similar to Capoeira?  Eskrima?  Break dancing?

Given that elves are involved though, it probably looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpaS2v-r7cE

I’m still unsure whether or not I’m using the great wheel planar cosmology in this setting.  Currently, the storyline doesn’t really touch on planar mechanics except for the existence of a few planes:

• godly domains
• “prison plane” for elder primordials
• elemental planes
• faerie lands (could be similar to feywild or separate pocket plane)

The phrase “get the boot” means to be fired, but where did the phrase come from?

It’s probably related to “kicked out” which is similar in meaning, but kicked out from where?  A house?  A boat?  An organization?

Fired is in itself a strange word if you think about it.  Apparently it came about because if you wanted to get rid of an undesired person but didn’t want to kill them, you burned their house down and banished them.

Kinda extreme, but strangely enough, I can picture Trump totally doing just that.

This is why a wish to live forever is a bad idea because it can get all twisted.  You’re still technically alive in suspended animation, but that’s not really gonna do you any good.

A wish for permanent youth would probably be better to avoid those situations where you find yourself wishing you were dead (i.e. buried alive underground – a situation grave enough to give an immortal nightmares).

Coincidentally, I saw a trailer for a new sci-fi movie about people paying for eternal youth, In Time.  It has Justin Timberlake in it for some reason, which I find kinda strange.

How does one interrogate a suspect that has so much power? If the local constables suspect an archmage of murder, what exactly can they do? A powerful wizard can pretty much use magic to hide his crimes, or resist any attempt of honest questioning.

I suppose the authorities can find a stronger wizard, but what happens if it’s the strongest wizard in the realm that is accused of wrong doing?

Do evil wizards automatically get away with murder in a fantasy setting as long as they’re the most powerful wizard around? Guess that’s one explanation for evil wizards trying to acquire more power…

What concerns does the tabletop RPG industry have? I see three main issues currently affecting the industry.

1) Fewer retail stores. This affects both sales and player recruitment.
2) The format of presenting content is changing (consumers use less books in favor of online sites, PDFs and ebooks).
3) Increased competition from other entertainment platforms.

People on the enworld or RPGNet forums might complain that WotC is losing their edge in the RPG market to newer companies, but looking at the above issues, I see WotC actively trying to address them (to various levels of success) whereas other companies are not. Paizo has a leg up on PDF sales, but they’re not exactly going out of their way to address any of the other issues.

In fact, I once asked a panel of independent game publishers at a convention if they feel obligated to support local game shops and what programs or incentives they have in place to do so. To a man, they all said that it was not their concern and they don’t have, nor plan on creating, any program to entice customers to support retail shops.

I guess they didn’t share my concerns.