D&D Demon Names

D&D started out with a singular demon, the Balrog. Then, after a cease & desist from the Tolkien estate, that one was renamed Balor, and slightly altered to sidestep copyright laws. Then, in Eldrich Wizardy the interplanar floodgates were opened, and a whole slew of demons were added to the game, which among with even more options were included in the original Monster Manual.   

Ever since its original incarnation, there has been a moteley crew of Demons and Daemons (later "Yogoloths") in the D&D Monster Manual. Of course, demons are evil chaos incarnate, and there should be endless variations of unique demons, not just a few known, standard types. But combinatorial Monster creation was ony done for Hordlings in the MM, and never caught on - more work, less recognizable. So what we have are the standard demon types, originally with the most boring names one could think of: Demon Type I, II, III etc. In the Monster Manual, they were then given made-up names in parentheses, which became the standard names for these demons (even though they only were supposed the type name type I-III, and only an example of a name for type IV-VI). 

Finally, in the BECMI 1985 Immortals set, these same types were given pretty cool, evokative names, which unfortunately never made it into the mainstream names. So ever since, we have been using the parenthetical, made-up names for these demons. 

• Type I = "Screaming Demon" (a.k.a. "Air Demon", "Winged Fury")
• Type II = "Croaking Demon" (a.k.a. "Swamp Demon", "Gobbler")
• Type III = "Howling Demon" (a.k.a. "Fire Demon", "Four Armed Horror")
• Type IV = "Groaning Demon" (a.k.a. "Forest Demon", "Biter")
• Type V = "Hissing Demon" (a.k.a. "Water Demon", "Destroyer")
• Type VI = "Roaring Demon" (a.k.a. "Mountain Demon", "Manslayer")
• Succubus = "Whispering Demon" (a.k.a. "Charmer", "Grey Deceiver")

In later works, demons were grouped into those Type classes, based on how dangerous they were. As I like the idea of evokative, descriptive names. So I made up some more for some of the others in italics, for use in my games.

Demon	CR	Class	Descriptive Name	Looks	Origin
Rutterkin	2	Minor	Warped	Stiltskin-like	MMII
Abyssal Wretch	1/4	Minor	Wretched		MMII
Quasit	1	Minor	Plotting	Imp-like
Maw Demon	1	Minor	Maw	Critters-like
Dretch	1/4	Minor	Snarling	Pug-like
Manes	1/8	Sub, Minor	Whining	Undead-like	Ancient Rome
Vrock	6	Type I	Srceaming / Screeching	Vulture-like	Gygax, S3:EW
Barlgura	5	Type I, (old: Minor)	Ululating	Ape-like	Lewis Spence's Encycopedia
Shadow Demon	4	Type I	Shadow	Shadow-like	FF
Babau	4	Type I (old: Minor)	Stalking	Skeleton-like	Mediterranean Folklore
Dybbuk	4			Jellifish-like	Jewish Myth, FC:HotA
Bulezau	3		Bleeting	Goat-like	MC:Planescape Appendix II
Hezrou	8	Type II	Croaking	Toad-like	Gygax, S3:EW
Armanite	7			Centraur-like	FCI:HotA
Maurezhi	7			Ghoul-like	MC:Planescape Appendix
Chasme	6	Type II, minor	Buzzing	Fly-like	MMII
Glabrezu	9	Type III	Howling	Dog-like	Gygax, S3:EW
Yochlol	10	Type III	Handmaiden of Lolth	Roper-like	Gygax, ItdotE
Alkilith	11		Door	Opening-like	MC:Planescape Appendix
Nalfeshnee	13	Type IV	Groaning / Grunting	Boar-like	Gygax, S3:EW
Wastrilith	13		Corrupting	Serpent-like	MC:Outer Planes Appendix
Marilith	16	Type V	Hissing	Snake-like	Hindu Myth
Nabassu	15	Major	Souleater	Bat-like	Mesopotamian Myth
Balor	19	Type VI	Roaring	Balrog-like	Tolkien
Goristro	17	Type VI	Bellowing	Bull-like	FCI:HotA
Sibirex	18			Wolf-like	FCI:HotA
Molydeus	21		Bile	Bodyhorror-like	FCI:HotA
Partial Demon
Succubus	4		Whispering	Seductress-like	S3:EW, Judean Myth; later also Incubus, now Shapechanger, not demon
Cambion	5	Human female+demon	Semi-Demon (male)
Alu-Demon	[5]	Human male+Succubus	Semi-Demon (Female)		Akkadian/Sumerian Myth, MMII
Draegloth	7		Half Drow/Demon	Werewolf-like
Daemons ("Yugoloths")			New Name
Charonadaemon	3		Merrenoloth	Charon-like	MMII
Mezzodaemon	5		Mezzloth	Beetle-like	FF
Derghodaemon	7		Dergholoth	Insect-like	MMII
Canodaemon	8		Canoloth	Dog-like	MC:Planescape Appendix
Hydrodaemon	9		Hydroloth	Frog-like	MMII
Nycaldaeomon	9		Nycaloth	Demon-like	FF
Piscodaemon				Crawfish-like	MMII
Yagnodaemon	11		Yagnoloth	Hellboy-like	MMII
Oinodaemon	12		Oinoloth	Ram-like	MMII, originally Antrhaxus
Arcanadaemon	12		Arcanaloth	Fox-like	MMII
Ultrodaemon	13		Utroloth	Alien-like	MMII
Guardian Daemon				Bear-like (varies)	FF
Demodands
Farastu			Tarry		MMII
Kelubar			Slime		MMII
Shator			Shaggy		MMII
Slaadi
Red Slaad	5				FF
Blue Slaad	7				FF
Green Slaad	8				FF
Grey Slaad	9		Executioners		FF
Death Slaad	10		Lesser Masters		FF

Demon Possession & Binding

Another issue with the D&D demons is that they are for the most part just boring bashers, especially in 5e. Many of them even cannot teleport, so they work like dressed-up, powerful ogres that smash you, maybe with some spell ability thrown in. That does not fit at all to all the wonderful themes of demonic influence and corruption and possession. Compare this to Elric!, where there is a rich narrative field enabled by evil demons bound into weapons and items, that give their wielder power but also work to corrupt them. Or look at the biblical stories, where a whole horde of demons possed one man, and were driven out.

Normally, this kind of stuff in D&D is just story dressing, DM-fiat background, with no rules to support it at all. How could such rules sensibly look like, without being to powerful in the hands of the players.

Demonic Items

For demonic magic items, I think one can largely re-use the rules for sentinent items (p. 214, 5e DMG 20214). The alignment of the item will be the demon's, as will be the Int, Wis and Cha scores, instead of rolling them randomly. The normal rules for domination or shutting off of powers apply. 

Creating the item. You need to prepare the item to receive the demon, using the normal crafting cost and rules. Then you use this item in place of a diamond worth 1,000 gp, as your component for Planar Binding, to bind the demon into the item after you summoned it and held it captive, either forcing the demon in, or striking a deal with it. In either case, there must be a purpose for the item and demon, which, when fulfilled, will free the demon. (I guess Stormbringers objective was to undo the multiverse and become all powerful.) You probably only should be able to create a demonic item from binding 

Powers: An item with a bound demon is in any case magical and thus deals magical damage. The cost and rarity of the item further should be commesurate with the powers that the demon gives to the item. The powers should be in line with the powers of the demon. They could include the item having the demon's perception or sharing some special perception with the wielder, giving the wielder a damage resistance, dealing special extra damage, or allowing the wielder to cast one or more of the spells the demon can cast, without components, at the demon's rate of casting.

Attunement: In most cases, narratively it would make sense to require such an item to need attunement. Use this as the default, and use the normal criteria to figure out if the item needs attunement to see if you can leave it off. 

For example, if you bound a Glabrezu Demon into a longsword. This demonic longsword would deal magical damage, could communicate telephatically with the wielder, and allow the wielder to have the sword cast fly once per day (without needing their own concentration). With attunement, this could be an uncommon with attunement. (A normal magical +1 weapon does not need attunement, which is a big difference, and it increases your damage and to hit; plus flight here is more limited compared to both broom and wings of flying which need attunement). A rare onyx fly needs no attunement, even though it lasts 12 hours and gives you a full creature, although you cannot use it every day; at rare, it might be OK to have this have no attunement, especially because the corrupting influence of the demon and its agenda adds a real downside to the item. Truesight, which the demon also has, or unlimited dispel magic per day both seem way too powerful. Truesight is an 8th level spell, and the only item granting it on a persistent basis is the Eye of Vecna. And unlimited castings of third level spells are nothing characters get, even at 20th level. Maybe you could allow this at higher rarities for detect magic.

Another example, an helmet in the shape of a vulture, with a Vrock bound into it, that grants darkvision and poison resistance to the wearer, and once per day can emit a Stunning Screech (as per the Vrock) ability. This probably should require attunement, and be very rare. Compare to rod of rulership which is rare and likewise can turn one battle around in a material way, and ring of resistance which is also rare, and this combines both.

Demonic Possession

For this, one could give all the greater demons (or groups of lesser demons) the Possession ability from the Ghost. The DC should probably be based on the CR of the Demon. If the Ghost at CR 5 has a DC of 13, and the characters get increases to their PB increase every four levels if they are proficient in the save so their saves increase (plus if you improve Cha with your stat increase, that gets better too), maybe +1 for every 3 CRs added or taken. DC 14 at CR 8, DC 15 at CR 11, DC 16 at CR 14, and DC 17 at CR 17 and DC 18 at CR 20. For comparison, the Balor (CR 19) death throes has DC 20, so this is below that benchmark. 

For hordes of smaller demons, one could sum up their combined CR, if they all use their action to enter. The demon classes are unfortunately all over the place, not reasonably based on CR bracktes. Minor demons range from CR 5 for a Barlgura all the way down to CR 1/4 for a Dretch. But one could say, as long as their combined CR is not at least 5, they cannot posses. 

For example, if a group of Dretches (CR 1/4) tries to possess someone , you need 4 of them for CR 1, and so you need 20 of them for CR5. That is 20 of them not multi-attacking and not belching a fetid cloud to force a possession save, which is a big opportunity cost. With 20, you'd expect at least one critical hit for 16 damage, no matter what ACs. Once you get the 20, they can try, and then would all together enter the host.

The Berlin years

When I got to start at University, I had some spare time and converted Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I liked and had an audience participation tape of, into a RPG location for D&D, Frankenfurther Mansion. 

Once courses started, I wore a T-shirt with the cover Iron Crown's Gorgoroth, sporting three Nazgûl riders in front of Mount Doom. That way I met Dirk, who was a D&D 1e player from Tübingen, and also a cool older student whose name I now cannot remember, I think Martin, and another co-student, Thomas, and we had the makings of a gaming group. Yvonne, also a co-student, joined in, and one of her girlfriends for some time to, as did one more co-student whose name now eludes me, a skinny blond guy who liked to wear black and was into industrial music. 

Dirk also introduced me to Myra, of a play-by-mail from Tübingen that was playing in a world established by a German pulp-magazine fantasy series I had never heard of nor read. I started playing a pirate kingdom on the world segment of Corigani for a few years. Later I repurposed the rules mechanics to run a middle-earth play-by-mail for a few years too. Back then there was no internet quite yet, so you would get real letters and make photocopies in a copy shop to mail out the newsletters of the last turn. 

Berlin as Germany's biggest city of course was a heaven for role playing (or any other fringe hobby really), with multiple shops selling role-playing books and paraphrenalia, and several cons being organized, and there also was Nexus E.V., a roleplaying association. Yvonne dated Raoul, one of the people running Nexus who was a super nice guy and native Berliner. At these cons, I attended other play groups' tables, and ran some games too, for example a Castle Ravenloft one-shot with pregenerated Characters, and through this found serveral new friends and play circles.  

One of them was André, a guy from a low-education background, was another native Berlier and  lived in a bad part of the city. He was smart and funny but always embroiled in some kind of financial difficulty or dubious business venture. He tried occutism and magic tricks, had unhealthy eating habits and was heavily overweight. I played turn-based strategy games on the computer with him, Warlords and such, which was fun. 

We did go to a retreat on a cottage in Schwaben that Dirk organized, and where he ran the D&D classic Desert of Desolation, with Yvonne and Thomas, Raoul (Yvonne's boyfriend), and were joined by a Richie, a super nice and laid back friend of Dirk from Tübingen. I also mastered a cottage playing Elric!, with a fantastic unpublished adventure by Dr. Stephen Schütte (that I got via Pittel, see below), Arioch's Children, one of the best I ever played. Thomas had nightmares from being in prison in game. We continued the Elric adventure in Berlin, and Andr'e joined us. It stressed him when the weird people from behind the mirrors wanted to observe his character around the clock. We also then played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay where André GMed, or Call of Cthulhu where I did. 

At another Con I met both Pittel and Daniel, both also native Berliners. Daniel had a GM named Frank, who lived with his ancient grandmother in a nice old villa with high ceilings in Wannsee. I would treck out there once a week for a game in his hombrew "Silvermoon" version of Dark Sun, playing homebrew rules derived from 1e D&D. In this group I also met Stefan, and a few other regulars. These were nice adventures, although Frank ran a tough, though campaign. You had next to no resources, and were constantly struggling to just survive. 

Pittel was part of a group of people that included another Daniel, a friend of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen and old-time Glorantha/Runequest player. I played in his Runequest group regularly, and got to meet Niels and his cute girlfriend Claudia, who also was a role player and competitive archer, Daniels wife Kerstin who would not play, but made delicious guacamole crackers for us, Robin who played a humakti duck, and Eini, an old schoolmate of Pittel. We also played regularly at Eini's place in Potsdam im Schwerterweg (Sword Way, a nice street name for a role player), also Runequest on Glorantha, and Earthdawn (to this day I get an earful from Claudia that I killed her fairy with my necromancer), and we started a large scale battle game which never took off. They also organized Glorantha-related cons, were you would meet people from all over the world, many from the UK. 

When Magic the Gathering came out in 1993 and flooded Berlin's role-playing scene, I caught the bug too.  Nils, who was a mathematics student, introduced me to it, and trashed me with a black vise. Soon I was building lots of decks and playing a lot. Most of the others also did a little, Yvonne and Raoul. Daniel and Stefan likewise were more seriously into it, and of course we'd meet many other players, including Pischner who for many years ran an MtG blog and was a regular author in the German MtG scene. That is a different story, though. Pittel disliked Magic because it pulled people away from RPGs. Raoul also sold his cards after a while. I still continued to play role playing games, but not that much any more.

Old DSA Games of our youth

We originally played Das Schwarze Auge (DSA). We played it for several years, with me as DM and mostly the same party, from 1984, when DSA it came out, to about 1989, when we started to explore other systems. Four years of magical childhood and youth. 

Before we brought in other players, my brother Marc and me we wrote and played a couple of our own adventures, that each would run for the other, one-on-one. The oldest one where some notes are still preserved  is from him. It was written and played in the old Black Forest cottage where we spend many of our childhood vacations. I recall it had a Tazelwurm, the most terrible monster in the origianl rules, and a deadly fight for a first level character, but he also put a weapon in it that could kill or scare off the wurm with a single use. Soon we brought in other friends from school.

The original play-group consisted of my brother Marc playing first an adventurer called Frodo (yes, I know ... we were kids and it was not that unusual for early RPG to have blatant ripoff names) and later a druid named Bombax (and after that, another one named Dan Gat). His friend and classmate Andi first played a dwarf named Ragondir Zornbold, the name was from the intro booklet, and later a wizard named Madruk; my friend and classmate Dieter played a rogue ("Streuner") called Spuk (I think named after a character in pulp horror magazines he enjoyed), and later a fighter called Quintus; and another of Marc's friends and classmates, Marian, played a fighter called Tschaba de Hut (yes, like the villain from Star Wars) -- he dropped out after some time. The rest of us are still playing, 40 years later.

The first adventure was "Silvanas Befreiung" (Freeing Silvana), the intro adventure from the rulebook, sporting a small dungeon under a house in the port city of Havena where the initial self-play adventure in the intro booklet also plays. After the players cleared that dungeon, they made it the base for their adventuring, outfitting it with traps and a treasure vault. 

We played every week on Fridays, and in the beginning, there were only four published adventure modules available.  From todays view, I would say that some of these early adventures were badly designed, but we were kids, and we knew no better: these worked for us.  

• "Wald ohne Widerkehr" (Forest of No Return), level 1-2, you had to defeat an evil necromancer in a ruined castle in the eponymous forest. This was fun, fond memories.
• "Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen" (Ship of Lost Souls), level 1-3, a ship with bullywugs and crocodile lizard men; cannot recall much. Not great.
• "Die Sieben Magischen Kelche" (The Seven Magical Chalices), level 1-4, from which mostly an atrociously out-of-universe riddle is memorable - the answer was "Rolling Stones" and the riddle was talking about the real-world rock band 

We missed playing the best-known one of the original four modules, "Das Wirtshaus zum Schwarzen Keiler" (Black Boar Inn) for level 1 characters, as we played others first then our characters were already too high level to go back to it. 

Other adventures then were published by Schmidt Spiele along with an Expansion rule set. Of those we played the following (we mixed them in with the self written ones listed further down but my memory is vague after all these years to reconstruct any exact order):

• "Unter dem Nordlicht" (Under Northern Lights), level 3-8, an adventure in an ice palace, with puzzles. I recall a puzzle with symbols that were the numbers 1-9, with their mirror images aligend to them. Not as cool as it sounded. I wrote my own ice palace adventure, too (see below).
• "Durch das Tor der Welten" (Through the Gate of the Worlds), level 3-8, a weird adventure on a huge "world-tree". I checked the weight of equipment the party carried the first time, and was shocked that some lugged around 400+ pounds of armor and stuff, with extra full plate mails in their backpacks. I had them drop all the excess. It think this experience is why to this day I'm a stickler for encumberance rules. The module sucked so we cut it short. 
• "Der Streuner Soll Sterben" ("he Rogue shall Die), level 4-8, only recall the undertaker who had entirely black skin.
• "In den Fängen des Dämons" (In the Demon's Clutches), level 5-10 - had a great scene with the wizard casting an illusion, and a nice cupboard of magic potions. Overall this was fun. 
• "Der Strom des Verderbens" (River of Doom), level 5-10. First PC death due an instant-death critical hit to Dieter's character by an Ogre from new critical rules we used.  
• "Zug Durch das Nebelmoor" (Trail through the Mistmoor), level 1-3, this was fun, with an annyoing Kobold. It worked even though it was for a much lower level range, as it was not focused on combat, and DSA characters were less crazy at higher levels than D&D ones.
• "Die Verschwörung von Gareth" (The Conspiracy of Gareth), level 7-12, a medieval tourney.
• "Die Göttin der Amazonen" (Goddess of the Amazons), level 7-12. This was OK.
• "Die Fahrt der Korisande" (Journey of the Korisande), level 9-13. 
• "Der Wolf von Winhall" (The Wolf of Winhall), level 10-14, we played this at school, in "project week". Dieter's fighter Quintus cought lycanthrophy and nearly was burned at the cross.
• "Verschollen in Al'Anfa" (Lost in Al'Anfa), level 10-14. A entertaining puzzle dungeon, with a nasty twist at the end.

We also played solo adventures, but they did not count towards the campaign, and did not use our normal characters

• "Nedime, die Tochter des Kalifen" (Nedime, daughter of the Caliph), a level 1-4 was solo adventure impressed me with  the layout of the house around a central courtyard. 
• "Borbarads Fluch" (Borbarad's Curse) was a sore disappointment. I expected to explore the tower of and meet Borbarad, the legendary evil necromancer behind Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen und Die Sieben Magischen Kelche. Instead it was a scifi mashup with a spaceship and no Borbarad to be seen. Big letdown, a little like D&D's 2es Castle Greyhawk.  
• I also bought "Das Große Donnersturm Rennen" (The great Thunderstorm Race), not a solo and an interestign adventure about an overland race with many parties, but we were off to playing D&D by then and never played it.

I also wrote the "Bierabenteuer" (Beer Adventure, this link is a polished version), on a school trip with our class, which was played with Dieter and another classmate, Michael, not with the main characters. The original notes are lost, but here is an ad-hoc recreation early on I made to play it with a stranger on a train ride to introduce her to RPGs, and here is a later sketch, where details differ as this was also from memory. Similarly, my bother and I made and played side adventures with our friend Stefan while we were visiting the UK with a hostess family for a few weeks. The Palace of the Ice Witch for 2 adventurers of level 1-3 may have been from then (sporting snow wolves, an ice devil hating the witch, ice-kobolds, an ice dragon, ice gargoyles, and the ice witch/queen herself). 

There was a German fanzine called "Fantasywelt" (Fantasy World), that included D&D adventures which I converted for play with DSA. As I recall, we played the following adventures, the first 4 were of the "Shadow" story cycle:

• # 4 "Der Priester des Chaos"(Priest of Chaos)
• #6 "Das Geheimnis des Silbernen Drachen" (Secret of the Silver Dragon)
• # 8 "Der Schattenwald" (Shadow Forest)
• #10 "In den Klauen des Schattens" (In the Claws of the Shadow). This I remember most clearly as it had great imagy of the shadow plane.
• #11 "Mutter der Skorpione" (Mother of Scorpions). This was an Arabian-Nights themed adventure. Drasula the evil wizardress escaped, and I wrote a sequel for it, "The Manticore's Trail".

Intially there were not enough published modules to go around for filling our needs, so I as the DM wrote my own ones to fill in: 

• A short overland travel adventure contained a scene with an ogre mentioned in the introductory booklet turned into playable content. I even sent in to the publisher, but my early teenage handwritten scrawlings on a scrap of paper of course had no chances of publication. Since that was the handwritten original, I have no copy.
• "Die Spur des Manticor"(The Manticor's Trail) A continuation of the Fantasyworld desert adventure Mother of Scorpions with the same wizardress; memorable is a wizard duel between her and Madruk (which he unfortunately lost), the players getting captured and Dieter managing to hide a magical ring in spite of being stripped. They eventually escaped, won their equipment back, and succeeded. 
• "Die Schwarze Perle" (The Black Pearl), set in the swamps near Havena, the settings port city where the intro adventures played, and for which we also had a Boxed Set. I vividly recall pacing on the upper floor of an exhibition space on a summer day,  thinking through the story, while my parents were putting up paintings for an exhibition. While the thinking up was fun, this played boringly.
• A wild goose chase around the continent of Aventurien with several short scenes, Dieter guessed right at the start this would end up in the Cyclop Isles, but they still needed to follow the whole sequence of clues to learn where exactly.
• "Der Fluch des Vampirs" (Curse of the Vampire) a vampire adventure with a castle ruin in the fog, faces at the window at night. Madruk nearly died, and the characters had a surprisingly hard time with skeletons that shot at them from a guard tower. This was great fun, and very atmospheric. 
• A Puzzle-Dungeon, that had an actuall puzzle gimmick as a hand-out. The PCs had to solve a number of riddles to escape an ancient dungeon complex. This also was fun, although the players peeked in my notes when I went to the bathroom because one of the riddles was too hard. 
• A side-trek fight against a bandit gang in their camp. One of the bandits, a huge bloke with a two handed maul was nicknamed "Hänschen" (Little Hans) and terrified the players. Many of the bandits were written to match to the pewter figurines we had bought at Games Workshop in the UK.
• The party eventually received a fiefdom, won if I recall right by defeating an evil mage and his dragon [fragment]. This of course let to adventure set there.
• "Das Geheinnis des Klosters" (The Secret of the Monastery), level 12-16 (1989)  An adventure for higher levels, where an evil minotaur god was to be summoned threatening to trash their fiefdom. Among other things, it included a magical gatling gun transported in a coffin (I had seen too many spaghetti westerns). I also learned that you can overdo the prep on boring mundane detail like sleep schedules for monks. The level ranges I gave vary widely - I think the monastery investigation part was low level, as there was little combat, the figth for the summoning gate againste demons was high level, as this was played towards the end of our DSA time. 

We also started to convert D&D adventures from old Dungeon Magazine issues, as they had a lot of cool monsters and settings. Among them were

• Out of the Ashes, issue #17, from May/June 1989, levels 8-12, a red dragon in a dungeon in a hovering crystal, I recall Madruk negotiating with the dragon. 
• The hunt in Great Allindel, issue #17, levels 4-7, the forest adventure part of this was quite nice. We also played The Pit from the same issue, with my brother as GM, but used Midgard rules.
• The Dark Conventicle, issue #11, levels 8-12, with an unfun witch hunter NPC I added, which taught me to not overshadow the PCs with DM pets. I think this was one of the very last ones we played with DSA. We also played The Black Heart of Ulom from this one, again run with Midgard by my brother. 

Towards the end I started tweaking the rules more and more too, using d20+mod to beat 20 or an opposed roll as a resolution mechanic. We started to experiment with other systems, like Midgard, that Ligi introduced, and Ligi mastered Call of Cthulhu's  Corbitt House for us, also introducing us to Call of Cthulhu that his group played. We joined them in a vacation retreat, that happend to be in the same village in the Black Forest as our vacation house. We also started MEPS/Rolemaster that my classmate Thomas had the rulesbooks for, and played a Rolemaster campaign in Middle Earth, and a few sessions of rolemaster Mythic Greece. Because I was of tired of converting D&D monsters, we started playing D&D with Dungeon Adventures outright.

Around this time I finished High School ("Gymnasium"), and my brother and Andi went to the US for an exchange student year, bringing our regular play group to an end. I however was still in Freiburg, doing my civil service, moving into my uncle Hans' flat, and continued to play with other gamers.

That began with Ancient Blood from Dungeon #20, together with serveral people from Ligi's group, Ligi, Harner, Mehler, which was a fantastic kick-off and a lot of fun. We played laying out the dungeon plans with paper strips on the carpeted floor. Harner's character got maimed by the blob behind the crevice. Lots of memories of that one. Afterwards, we tried to play Tomb of Horrors, and Markus also joined in, as did one of Dieter's friends, Kauff. The most fun part was during a small prequel I ran, an underwater adventure where the party was trying to learn the background poem and its clues from a marid: Mehler cast lightning bolt with his fresh-minted 10th level wizard, and died in the resulting-self centered electroball.  But the module itself was so tedious that we broke off. 

There were too many other things going on, Thomas ran Rolemaster in Middle Earth, playing fantastically stupid orcs and handing Grond, Melkor's hammer to my character, which turned out to be a mixed blessing - it was super powerful, but somehow it was not clear if the hammer or I was in charge now. We also tried Shadowrun, run by Oliver, one of Marc's friends who went to another school, in his fathers house, and played more Call of Cthulhu. The DSA era had ended, and then the civil service eventually ended too, and we all moved to different places to study and my youth ended with it. 

Questions & Answers from a year of Role-Playing Games Stack Exchange

I spent a year of spare time asking and answering questions on Role Playing Games Stack Exchange. 

You can filter for my most upvoted questions and answers on the site. But the most upvoted ones are not the most interesting ones. This has several reasons.    

Questions

I found asking questions on SE difficult. A few active members use their interpretation of the site policies to limit what questions should be allowed, mainly questions about concrete social problems you encounter in play, or simple rules questions that can have a "right" answer. Everything else can easily get downvoted or closed, and once closed, nobody can answer them. I believe this is primarily out of concern that the site would devolve into a low quality discussion forum experience otherwise. So the questions I found most interesting often did not survive. 

Sometimes someone would claim I had a "X-Y problem", and did not understand my problem. While this can be well-meaning, I felt it was horribly patronizing to insist I did not know what question I was interested in, even after I confirmed I did indeed want to ask that question, not another one they wanted to rather answer, or felt more able to.  

Shutting down questions is easy, all it needs are five votes. You can pick your reason from "opinion-based", "off-topic", "needs focus" or "duplicate", and it is very hard to formulate a question that cannot be argued to run afoul one of the them if someone puts their mind to it. Even if it does not, that does not stop people from voting to close. Duplicate is maybe the most problematic, as anyone with a gold badge for the game in question can single-handedly close questions as duplicates. Even if the question later gets re-opened, that marks it as "not well-received" for badge achievement.

I found that questions about the history of the game, worked to avoid closure. They often were intially greeted with downvotes as "mere curiosity" questions, but in the end most had high positive scores from the wider community. Questions about social issues in our game (mostly DM management) were generally well received. And question on how to interpret certain game features like spells or optimization questions about feats, but of course, I could have answered those myself. 

Sharing Research.  These were some of my earliest questions, self-answering for sharing research work. Shared-research questions were mostly closed or forced through "workshopping", even though they were real problems I had had, and from my perspective were more useful than rules question you can solve in 2 minutes by reading the rulebook, because they would have saved someone else those hours or days of work. It was not a good experience, even if the people who did it meant well.

• Scary Monsters that deal long-term handicaps Closed.
• Handling monsters more deadly than their CR Closed before getting reopened.
• By what in-game logic is there no market for Wizard spells? Closed. 
  
• Spells affecting an opponent permanently Closed. @Someone_evil managed to get a nice answer in before that. Unfortunately, I cannot award bounties on closed questions.

Clarifying fundamental rules and rules interpretation concepts. Questions that asked about general rules were ill received by those who wanted a specific problem you had run into during a game session,. Their position was one should never ask in general, claiming one cannot answer usefully in general. That's of course nonsense. It would be more useful to have general guidance, than only having answers for specific little situations. I'd often start out with several downvotes. At least, if the question somehow survived and was not permanently shut down by closure, it often got solidly positive votes. 

• Are names of game features rules text? You'd think this is not a problem question. Think again.
• What is the source of the "There are no hidden rules" principle?
• What is the souce for "D&D is not a physics simulation"? 
• Source for "everyday things behave as expected"? Closed. Heavy downvotes. 
• Does Lore count as Rules-as-Written? 
• When is an object a magic item?
• Does "item" include creatures?
• Distances through portals
• What is a game feature?
• What is Energy in 5e? 

Statistics questions to help with optimization, evaluating how strong something is for game balance. These met with heavy opposition, users claiming such statistics are not useful, you only can speak about a specific situation or play group and never generalize. Individual experience from years of play, in-depth statistical analysis or surveys would not be not good enough for answers, and hence the questions were closed as opinion-based. 

• Average Number of Encounters per day  Closed as "opinion-based", much later reopened. In my mind, this is my best Q&A, looking at it from many angles, with lots of supporting evidence. 
• Average Damage per Attack for Monsters by CR
• Average Damage Output for PCs by level
• Net Effect of Advantage & Disadvantage Closed as "Duplicate".
• Time it takes in-game to get to level 20
• What is better: per short rest or proficiency bonus times? 
• What deals more damage, +1 to damage or +1 to to hit? Eventually I self answered to get an overview over the level range. The question survived because you also could answer it  in a mathematically airtight way, by only comparing ACs with to-hits, which of course has limited practical use for deciding which of the two to put on masterwork weapons in general. 

Based on our campaign. These fit the "I have a concrete problem from play" pattern.

• Is Gloom Stalker Overpowered? My most viewed question.
• How to deal with advanced "remote control" tactics in dungeons? 
• As a DM, how do you avoid getting tired of the monsters always losing?  
• How does Rod of Rulership work?
• How can we help our DM to keep things moving?
• How to manage minions?
• What can spells in a Shield Guardian target?
• Can you force your way into Rope Trick? Can a Large creature enter? Can you cast it mid-air?
• How far from Undermountain to Skullport?

Individual Spells. In reality due to voting, SE is a popularity contest, not a way to determine objective truth. Votes are opinions, and often are as much about what people like, as they are about what is technically correct. In many cases when there is no clear-cut rules answer, what you go to SE for is to get a feeling what people vote for and what seems to be common consensus of how to handle it best. That is how we went there first. That is, ironically, the value for us was mostly to get others opinions, exactly the thing that the purists claim has no place on the site. 

• Does Banishment banish equipment? My second most downvotes, a valid, disliked question. 
• Bigby's Hand vs Telekinesis
• Reliable Non-Concentration spells for Contingency the list is super short, to my surprise
• Using Invisible Stalker summons to get around anti-Divination magic It works
• What level does the sleep spell stop being effective? 
• Teleport objects needed, and scrying, bombing with Freezing Sphere,
• Phantom Steed equipment, number of riders, moving after ending
• Max damage deliverable in a day with Glyph of Warding on a Demiplane

Equipment

• Normal spellbooks
• Pony vs Mule Why pay extra for non-performance?

Dealing with Shitty Rules.  These are questions where the rule is bad, so how to go about it? As that question would be opinion based, you cannot ask for that directly, you can only ask for how the rules work, and hope someone answers based on experience, explains the rule is shitty and what you could do. 

• Creature Space in Combat: I think it is preposterous that creatures need to jump off a boat or carpet, just because combat starts. How is a creature's space defined?  Can you chose to not participate in combat? Creatures fitting on a carpet of flying in combat -- the best solution under the rules is to declare creatures that do not want to fight efficiently can share the space. similar to allow someone to not participate. Same thing, in a boat. 
• Souls. Is there a difference between soul and spirit?,  Where do souls go after death and are they free to be raised?  Raising souls from hades, and from the a night hag's nightmare haunting. Does Revivify work on trapped souls? @trish found an answer. Can you revive a specter? Nope. 
• Expertise. How to justify Expertise [Closed], What does it mean to break bounded accuracy? 
• Are Pixies overpowered at CR 1/4? I still don't get how anyone can defend they are not. 

Answers 

If you answer an old question, you get much fewer eyeballs. The bulk of people using the site do so by looking up common, very old questions found via web searches. Those already have answers, often many of them, and often also highly upvoted and accepted ones. As answers are by default sorted with the accepted answer pinned on top, and then in order of votes, if you add one more answer without votes it will be way, way down on the page. Most people won't even look at it. And if it is not one of these evergreen questions, likely nobody is looking at it at all. So getting any votes for answers to these old questions is hard. My early answers were to those questions, for example about spells like contingency, about what an object or creature is, or about portals and glyph of warding, and often stuck at 0 or few votes.

I also initially answered unanswered old questions that irked my OCD of making everything neat. Because there was little interest in them or they did not have a clear-cut answer, they did not get a lot of votes, either. 

Later I switched to answering new questions. These get more eyballs and engagement, as the small group of active, daily users is looking at this category. However, most of the obvious questions für D&D 5e have long been asked, so these were mostly Homebrew Reviews, obscure rules corner cases,  or 3.5, Pathfinder which I stopped playing long ago and Pathfinder 2, which I never played (but had good online rules books). This worked a lot better if you care about votes and had the nice effect that I learned about other games from looking up what the rules said. 

The most popular are answers that deal with social interactions, because everyone can relate to them and have an opinion on them. These often get [Good Answer] badges for more than 25 votes. Of course, positive feedback instead of nothing felt good, too. 

Also successful are simple, clear rules answers, a short rules quote with some explanation, so it fits on one screen. These answers were successful in spite of being boring -- or maybe especially for being so, because then they are easy to verify as correct. These often become the single, accepted answer. 

Sometimes answers got downvoted to a negative score because people did not like them even when they were technically correct, or because they were answers to questions some highly active people want to close instead of getting answered, and so they downvoted to punish you for answering, independent of how correct or good the answer is. 

Because of these effects, sorting answers by vote is not a great way to find interesting answers. And because this site here is mine, here is a list that reflects my take on the most interesting or memorable answers (out of the 888 total answers I posted at the time I wrote this):

DM Techniques -- the core of DMing. Not game system specific, although there may be some influence. 

• Using random encounters @nitsua60 with a great answer, gifted us bounties.
• Creating the story with the players, instead of railroading 
• Using time pressure to drive the action 
• Implementing a creature with a vulnerable point with 2 different, high scoring answers
• How to run aerial combat two bounties, from @linksassin and @lfusaso
• Allowing it once, to have a fast flowing game without setting expoitable precendent
• Curb munchkinism expoiting the rules, use real-world sense for mundane interactions
• Big treasures, and how to keep the game interersting afterwards
• DM not bound by PC mechanics in building dungeons and NPCs

Fundamental Rule / Term Defintions. Creature and object definition show up all the time in interpreting rules. I refined these answers as I learned more. 

• What is a creature, is a soul a creature, and how to deal with displaced souls for effects that work on creatures -- will you reach a displaced soul with sending, Magic Jar.
• Object, composed object, containers as objects, object sizes, object weight , are liquids objects?

Real-world medieval history and game economy. These are among the most interesting to research, as you learn something about the real world.

• Without a magic item economy, what is gold for? 
• Value of a gold piece
• Poison damage per gp 
• How much does it cost to manufacture a conductor stone?
• Roads, castles, cost of 
• Lifestyle Expenses
• Size of Settlements
• Mailed letters 
• Barrel fitting (@trish made a fantastic answer)
• Disinfectants
• Spellbook replacement, number of spells per spellbook, 
• Arrow and Bolt sizes vs Forcecage
• Siege weapon rate of fire

Adjudicating fundamentally murky or flawed areas in the rules. There are parts of the rules that are not well designed, like the magic item rarity to power or sensible prices, or the rules about creature space in combat.

• Magic item rarity
• Does the Bugbears "Sneaky" trait always apply? Initially exploring the space rules in combat. 
• Wild Shape and Rot Grubs? Parasites
• Is alcoholism a curable disease? Friendly co-answering with @Kirt
• Travel speed and rest, and another one on Phantom Steed
• Pulling an object from your backpack with a simple object interaction
• Area of effect of ongoing spell effects, using the example of casting a wall of force into them.
• Actions Outside of Combat
• Are carried creatures equipment?, Carrying and grappling
• Running blindly
• Monster weapons with special effects
• Bonus Action spells Core rules say 1 cantrip, Xanathar changes it to cantrips
• Look of a spell scroll, the correct answer by the rules. @nautarch assigned a 500 bounty, then retracted it. Example of where people dislike the rule, and therefore dislike the answer telling them what the rule says. 
• Specific beats general there are a few questions where my answer was up against one by @thomasmarkov. He can be very convincing, so these were always interesting. This one went to me.

Sharing useful experience on PC tactics and shenanigans

• How do you survive level 1 as a wizard? Good general wizard know-how.
• How to defend allies as a Fighter at level 1? Ditto.
• What countermeasures protect against Power Word Kill?
• How do I make an ageless warlock? All the different ways to become immortal in the game.
• Moving 10,000 gp of gold A lot of calculations and Floating Disk
• Getting a dragon Answered three different ways, none downvoted.
• Helping a weak, low level group The downvotes are bunk. These methods work.
• Whats the best big gun 3rd level spell? Sharing play stats

Game History

• In which editions of D&D have druids been able to Wild Shape into owlbears? This got a 500 bounty by SE's top contributor, @KRyan. In which editions can you breed in animal form? is similar, somehow people are curious about how wild shape changed over time.
• Shield of the Hidden Lord This was a long-unanswered one, the last one standing. I contacted the published author, and they were kind and did answer! @consus gifted 50 rep to it.

Optimization and Balance. These questions look at the game mechanics and expected outcomes for optimal results, and often took a lot of work and number crunching. Answering them drove some of my own questions in turn.

• Most Damage with a 17th level Fighter This was the first min-max question for me, and I spent days refining it in friendly collaborative back and forth with @goodguy5 who had the other answer, which was a nice experience, and learned a lot about optimization math. Icing on the cake was that @someone_evil ran a Monte-Carlo simulation, improving the answer further.
• Nerfing Sharpshooter Exploration of the mathemetical impact of sharpshooter, took days
• Statistically, when should you wait to use Sneak Attack on a second attack with advantage? Impact of criticals, crit ranges, advantage, disadvantage.  Lots of work.
• Stacking AC bonuses made me learn about rules for combining game effects. 
• How to increase AC over 20 without magic items is a good example for the late answer effect. The very old, accepted answer has a lower AC, fewer methods, and many times the votes.
• Does the number of spells at a Wizard's disposal affect game balance?

Statistics. These came out of the optimization questions, as you need to make assumptions about hit rates, number of encounters (assuming short rests in between), etc. 

• Is there an accepted likelihood of hitting that is consistent across tiers, and how has it been determined? Useful for optimization questions, looking at this from various angles. Establishes 65% hit rate without magic weapons. 
• Surviving without Sleep against Nightmare After original ballparking, followed @Someone_evil's lead and spent a couple hours to program a simulation to work it out
• Average monster AC per CR based on all the work here but somewhat plain
• Most often used languages A lot of list intersecting on the command line for this one. But this was yet not the best answer to the question!

Glyph of Warding and Portals. Glyph breaks how normal spellcasting works. I tagged questions with glyph for the [Taxonomist] badge, but accidentally flooded the "front page" doing so. The tag was removed for [spell][trap], which does not capture these uses of glyph. I later created a tag for [portals]. which has been used independently, and in the end got there. 

• Combining Contingency and Glyph, Glyph to summon demons, glyph compared to symbol,  Glyph and storable spells, triggering out of a  Portable Hole, 
• Portable hole, locating portals with locate object, using demiplane as a transport, contact through portals, nature of pocket dimensions.

Individual Spells

• Circumstances for Contingency This was one of my very first answers, adressing the myriad questions associated with that spell, and the friendly reception by @jack made a big difference 
• Teleport and Initiative
• Unseen Servant doing the dishes. targeting
• Find Familiar. I answered over 50 questions about this spell
• Imprisonment Minimus Containment - so cute!
• Identify vs artifacts still works...
• Astral Projection vs Plane Shift
• Clairvoyance
• Resilient Sphere vs teleportation
• Wristpocket and Arcane Abeyance This one got a 200 bounty from @thomasmarkov
• Modenkainen's Sword, making a case for discovery vs the fetish for perfect balance
• Shield spell not stacking with shield. My most downvoted answer, as I wrote this at -12. I think it is technically correct, it makes narrative sense, and it also is wiser for play balance. But people clearly do want to stack their shield and the spell.

Helping others. There were several cases where a question got shut down because someone does not know how to answer it themselves, and therefore deems it unanswerable, or pressures the asker to ask a question they rather would answer.

• What percentage of Call of Cthulhu characters start drowning on average? This is a prime example. It took me a reading of all the relevant new CoC rules and a lot of number crunching to help. Others just told him it's a stupid question, but he had been told so and it still was important to him. This got me a bounty of 300. I also answered another question for him for another 400.

Other Odds and Ends

• Council Voting in Waterdeep this lore qeustion meant poring over lots of old books from first, second, third, and fourth edition, as 5th does not have a lot. 
• College of Poems bard One of the many homebrew reviews. I had fun answering in rhyme. @shadowranger, with the accepted highly-voted answer was a great sport and defended it.
• Spells known and Wizards This one is memorable because @non_novelist granted a 500 point bounty on it. Unfortunately, he could not deal with how the stack was run, and got banned.
• Using alternate ability scores for attack just a useful collection.