It’s not that I don’t like the genre, it’s that I probably played it too much.

I had dinner with my pal Math last Saturday and he told me that he too was tired of the whole j”Just close the door on that World-eating monster”.

So my players are ripe for what I got cooking for them this week!

But I do agree the genre lends itself to easy way out endings. Just be thankful they aren’t Stephen King, where the hell did that come from endings.

The DMG covers mountainous terrain but not so much avalanches, and oxygen depletion. Unless I’m mistaken.

Thanks for taking the time to write this, good points all.

My greatest influence for becoming a DM and agreeing to all of the prep work was H.P. Lovecraft! This is always evident in my games, thank god that I play with horror geeks.

I love the sense of creeping doom. Instead of the Heroes having all of the power, it should be the evil minions. Where is the heroics if the enemy is clearly outclassed and out gunned? Players should think twice before attacking anything, thinking to themselves with every encounter, that this could be their last.

The evil in my games is also corruptive, I love moral tales. Alignments are there for a reason, test their resolve. Every action, no matter how small has an equal reaction. I find that a rich Lovecraftian world can do this wonderfully.

Dark wizards, hungry for power, tricked into bringing over something dark and sinister that is corrupting the entire town. The formerly evil wizard wants to stop it, but at every turn he finds that the evil fiend is simply using him as a pawn.

Evil . . . I can’t think of a single author that handled evil so beautifully as H.P. Lovecraft. Not Chaotic Evil anyway. God forbid that you get some idiot like Skeletor testing the PC’s and turning them into heroes.

What if there was a devil, and what if he slew your gods centuries ago, now only dealing with the last remaining fragments of these dead gods, our souls. It is an intriguing idea.

But on one point, I will agree with you. Written Modules aren’t suppose to guide campaigns in this way. The evil must be tailor made for your PC’s on a very personal level. Modules are just suppose to give the DM a break once in a while with a little side quest. By taking major undertakings, such as building the cyclopean underwater cities, in effect, they are dumbing down the game and making DM’s afraid to alter the campaign settings that they’re playing in.

Fighting in high altitudes? Isn’t this already in the DMG?

They actually ruled it by each representing one of the great virtues of rulership. As their power grew, their virtuousness lessened, until it was corrupted into said sin.

Then a bunch of them destroyed each other. Fun!

EDIT: By the way, they are considering making Arc 3 in 4e, but there were delays in getting the 4e material out to them, so I don’t know if they will be.

Pathfinder’s Runelords are legendary Evil Arcane Casters that ruled parts of an Empire through the magic of a fundamental sin. There are 7 sins, each with a rune of power representing it… hence Runelord.

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