Blame It on Customs

Has it really been over a month since I last posted? I blame the U.S. Customs.

After all, Pathfinder #14—featuring Mike McArtor’s Second Darkness adventure “Children of the Void”—got delayed en route from China by Customs for at least three weeks. So surely I can also blame them for the theft of my time, energy, and focus. Right?

Or not.

Anyway, posts on the way. Hopefully.

A Tardy Return

Well, I’m back from vacation! …And already posting a day late. *Sigh* Mexico and Ireland were great (as was the long weekend in Baltimore and Philadelphia in between) and I even managed to mine my travels for some D&D world-building ideas. But a fever has made my reëntry into the daily grind a bit rocky.

But never fear, I am indeed back. Rather than posting every weekday, I’m going to try to keep to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, both for my own sanity and to keep the quality of the posts high. So look for a new post tomorrow as I dive back into realms of myth, magic, and mayhem.

Summer Vacation

Back in July, I started this blog as an outlet for D&D ideas that I’d too long neglected and which now felt orphaned in the wake of 4th Edition. (I pause for a moment to mourn my poor barghest ecology, which received positive feedback from Dragon years ago, and which I never got around to revising…because I am an idiot.) It was a way to get myself writing again and carve out a little bit of fantasy pleasure during the workday. Never did I realize that I would actually be able to keep it up, essentially without interruption, every single weekday for seven straight weeks.

But I’m off for vacation to Mexico and then Ireland, so On Beyond Drow will be on vacation, too. In between the two trips, I’ll try to catch up on tweaking and revising the entries I haven’t had a chance to upload yet. And, having run across some interesting D&D blogs in the past few days, when I come back I’ll consider engaging some of those folks in conversation and perhaps promoting this blog in general a little more.

So I’ll see you soon—possibly in a few days; definitely in three weeks once my travels are over. If you’ve found this blog and are enjoying it, look for more come September 15th.

It’s been a fun seven weeks and I can’t wait to come back. Thanks for reading, and keep thinking of ways to imagine on beyond drow…

Exigence—Why Now?—And a Note on 4th Edition

I’ve been kicking the germ of On Beyond Drow around for a while. So what has finally spurred me to put some ideas down? Well, Paizo’s work revisiting classic monsters shows there’s an appetite. And with 4th Edition D&D now out, I'm supposing that there are two natural audiences—4th Ed fans looking to build brand new worlds and 3.0 and 3.5 fans hungry for fresh content for their favorite system.

By the way, I have not made the switch to 4th Edition. Whether I do so in the future is up in the air. But I’ll try to make the ideas fresh enough that they can crossover among editions, even if particular crunchy nuggets don’t.

I promised evil elves. I’ll deliver tomorrow: the hag elves.

Introduction

Most great D&D campaigns are defined by their villains. A heroine's legacy is shaped by the monsters she chooses—or is forced—to face. A land in the clutches of an undead tyrant breeds one kind of champion; a land living under the shadow of a dragon breeds another.

The drow are, in some ways, the ultimate villainous race. But their very power and popularity with DMs and designers alike have made them ubiquitous to the point of cliché.

In this space we will—to borrow a notion from Dr. Seuss—move on beyond drow. We'll create other evil elves for characters to fight. We'll come up with new subraces to stymie (and aid) your PCs. And we'll try to create cultures that feel alive, fresh, and fantastic.

By "we," of course I mean "me." This is a place for me to jot down and share ideas. If you're intrigued by what you read here, feel free to comment, contribute, and/or riff. Just be sure that if you borrow an idea, it's for your personal use and not something to be published or posted somewhere else. That's how intellectual property works. Cool? Cool.