The questions AND answers are great!

#9's my favorite!

Shame about #1, I once knew a cleric who delivered cure spells through Wesley Willis-style headbutts.

"In my game, I had a similar problem, and now one of my players is trying to become Pope."

This was always my favorite from Sage Advice.

Question:
Not long ago, my character had an accident with his spelljamming vessel --
the reactor on his gnomish sidewheeler suffered a meltdown while in the
phlogiston (and you know what that means). My character tried to steer the
ship through a portal into Realmspace, but the ship blew up before it had
exited the flow. The resulting explosion destroyed the ship, the portal, and
a good portion of the crystal shell (Fortunately, my character escaped via
his amulet of the planes). Since the resulting hole in the crystal shell is
going to allow the phlogiston to rush into Realmspace, would that mean that
Toril will be consumed in flames? If so, how much experience does my
character get when the entire population (barring fire-resistant creatures)
is killed? (A number rounded to the nearest million would be okay.) Does the
character receive any additional experience from escaping the wreck?


Reply:
It's time for a few reminders about the properties of crystal shells:

First, all crystal shells are made of an unknown substance that is
unbreakable; check out page 9 of the CONCORDANCE OF ARCANE SPACE (from the
original SPELLJAMMER(r) boxed set) for more details. Mortals cannot destroy
or alter crystal shells, except in the limited manner described in
CONCORDANCE OF ARCANE SPACE. Even a wish is ineffective. Exploding
spelljamming ships aren't up to the job.

Second, crystal shells are so huge that the explosion in your example could
not destroy a significant portion of even a small one. The Realmspace shell
has an area of about 128,680,000,000,000,000,000 square miles (the planet
earth, by contrast has a surface area of only 196,938,800 square miles).
Even if the explosion created a fireball the size of the sun, the hole it
would make would be a mere pinprick when compared with the size of the
shell. The space inside a shell is so huge (cosmically huge) that time would
end before enough phlogiston could leak in to flood the entire sphere, or
even to threaten the outermost planets in the system.

Third, phlogiston does not tend to flow through holes in crystal shells.
Every portal through a shell is a hole, but some barrier or phenomenon keeps
the phlogiston out, though ships that locate the portal can pass through.
Even if the explosion in your example "jammed" the portal open and allowed
phlogiston to leak in, you'd probably just get a localized effect that leaks
just like a star embedded in the shell. Ships still could use the portal,
provided their crows had enough nerve to dive into the heart of the star.

Finally, experience in the AD&D(r) game is awarded for success achieved in
the face of a significant risk. Inadvertent destruction is not success, so
even if your character had managed to incinerate all of Toril, he wouldn't
be entitled to any experience for it. Your DM, however, might give the
character a few experience points for surviving the wreck. How big the award
is depends on the campaign, but it should be fairly small, 1,000 xp would be
sufficient for a character rich and power, full enough to own a spelljammer.






This one is pretty funny as well:

Question:
In our game we have two characters that are at one thousand-plus level. This happened in "Armageddon," a conflict between the gods and the characters. Of course, the characters won. What do you think about that?

Reply:
Not much. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I will repeat: A forty-plus-level character is ridiculous. We feel that you must advance one level at a time, not a whole bunch at once. I don't understand how or what happened or even if all the gods were in this battle, but if you enjoy playing this way, feel free to do so. I don't want to spoil your fun.

This is where I am obliged to link Inane Bullshit from Sage Advice.

Quote from: Melan;632441This is where I am obliged to link Inane Bullshit from Sage Advice.

Aww god. That brought back this quote to me:

Quote from: Old Geezer;311458Okay, so Skip Williams finally admits he was one of the 13 year old kids who kept getting his character killed by Gary and Rob because he had his head up his ass.

Note the comment about "aribitrary and capricious GMs."  Good GMs aren't, and neither Gary nor Rob ever were.

About 1974 there was a sudden influx of younger high school age kids into Gary's mostly-adult game.  We are still seeing the aftereffects.

Also, I was Skip Williams' patrol leader in Boy Scouts too.

I laugh and laugh.

You know, I never really got the whole Sage Advice thing.  I mean, this was before internet.  You had to wait up to 2 months before you got an answer for your question, and that was even if he decided to choose your question to answer.  What did players do during this time?  Put their campaign on hold for 2 months?

I never met anyone who didn't just make it up if there was no clear answer.  Players and DMs didn't always agree, but there was always a resolution one way or the other.

I'll be damned!  I just read something awesome, and by Mike Mearls no less

Quote"Writing RPG rules to counter bad DMs is like writing software to fix a broken computer."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;632530I'll be damned!  I just read something awesome, and by Mike Mearls no less

Yup. Just added it to my sig.

Kind of tongue-in-cheek move on my part, actually, since I'm wondering if he needs to remember his own words back then...

Quote from: Sacrosanct;632530I'll be damned!  I just read something awesome, and by Mike Mearls no less:
"Writing RPG rules to counter bad DMs is like writing software to fix a broken computer."

Quote from: Benoist;632458Aww god. That brought back this quote to me:

"About 1974 there was a sudden influx of younger high school age kids into Gary's mostly-adult game. We are still seeing the aftereffects."

-Old Geezer

Indeed we are.  

JG