> > It's Monty *Hall*. > > Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. Occupational hazard. You'd be correct if we were discussing a game show host. ;-) The term "Monty Haul" is role-playing game slang for "a game master who lets his players have all sorts of magic and treasure that they really haven't earned, to the point of unbalancing the game". It's a common affliction of the newbie game master, due to the desire to both please the players and to have lots of "cool" stuff in your game. Most grow out of it, though some enjoy that style of gaming. The analagous player archetype is the "Munchkin", that being the power gamer who bends every rule, tries to amass as much treasure as possible and generally tries every method he can think of to exploit, cajole, and outright cheat his way to the top. Munchkins are sometimes born out of Monty Haul campaigns, growing up thinking that there's nothing wrong with a level 10 character that owns planar armor and a flaming vorpal sword that can kill gods with one blow because that's the style of play they're accustomed to. Others are just born with the conviction that they're entitled to anything and everything that they can possibly con the game master into giving them. Monty Haul was just a convenient term to represent the idea I had that maybe Vlad was becoming unrealistically powerful, especially considering that we're only (theoretically) halfway through his cycle of stories. I could maybe see it if we were on book 16 and The Last Contract was just around the corner someplace. On the other hand, the various conjectures about Vlad's return over the last couple of days have shown that there is still plenty of story-telling potential there. I'm not overly concerned about it. It's difficult to say something like "I hope Vlad stays true to himself" when the "present day" portion of the series is all about a character who's constantly questioning just who he is and what he's developing into. I'm hoping that whatever happens to him, that he remains distinctly "Vlad" without devolving into some kind of stereotypical fantasy hero. I like change just so long as it's evolutionary in nature. So far, that seems to be the case.