Morrus
Frazzled

It’s open Tomorrow Nov 20th! Morrus https://twitter.com/dms_guild/status/1064688359258423296?s=21

...en if the game has been at a standstill for twenty excruciating minutes. Be gentle about it, and be encouraging, but you gotta be firm. You have to drive the point home that learning (and using) the rules is non-negotiable, for all players. I hope it doesn't come to that, because when people get frustrated their tempers get short, and things can get heated quickly. Be ready to calm people down, remind them it's a game and everyone is there to have fun, maybe call a break every now and then. The last thing you can do is adapt your game. Maybe those four players aren't looking for a strict, by-the-rules style of game. Perhaps they are more interested in a looser, storytelling kind of experience. The rules should support the framework of the story, not the other way around, so if all the focus and detail on the rules is tripping up two-thirds of your players, maybe you should get rid of some of the rules. EDIT: I was a little more short than I should have been earlier. Morrus is right: people play this game for any number of reasons, and there is no "wrong" way to play it. The point is to have fun, always.

First, please allow me to say "Awesome job with WotBS". I recently learned about this adventure when a group of players approached me to be their DM for the series. I'm planning on running 5e, BTW. I read the Player's Guide and the Campaign Guide, and the first adventure. Top Notch! I was mildly surprised to see/learn the 3.5e and 4e versions. Our first session will be 9 Dec. I went ahead and purchased all the 5e content from DriveThruRPG. My question: What's the best way to keep abreast of latest releases? Welcome! I am happy to hear that you are enjoying my adaptation of this amazing campaign saga to 5e. The 5e version primarily adapts the 3.5 version while incorporating some of the 4e content where it builds on the core story while doing things in as "5e a way as possible". I am wrapping up the finishing touches on the fourth adventure, and it should be out in the next day or so. :) Each adventure's release will be announced on this website as well as @ancrisit and Morrus on twitter. You can also go to one of the book's pages and click the "follow your favorites" link on the left which will send you an email whenever anything is released. https://www.rpgnow.com/product/242808/War-of-the-Burning-Sky-5E-1-The-Scouring-of-Gate-Pass If you are enjoying it, please consider leaving a rating or review for the adventures and guides. Thanks!

Morrus: *Ahem* Does this adventure actually have stats for Kwalish?It just says to use the evoker statblock, which doesn't make much sense to me.

Morrus The 2nd and 8th bullet points are the exact same article.

Morrus Who is this vampire Strand you speak of? ;)

Morrus Cthulhu Dark - thematically and trope-wise it's CoC, but with a much better (and lighter - the name is a play on words) system. There's also a free PDF version available. The whole system in 3 columns of text.

Morrus No Slasher Flick by Spectrum Games? http://www.spectrum-games.com/slasher-flick.html

...nd awhile ago. What percentage of that is going to spend time watching someone else roll dice and pencil in numbers on a piece of paper? Keep in mind, this is the same thing as asking what percentage of people would be interested in watching a Magic the Gathering game. Which based on their more recent tournament (Worlds I think?) was 19,000 people* (Out of a player base of reportedly 20-30 million). So we can theorize that what we're looking at is a viewer rate of about what? 6,500 to 9,000? I don't think I'd call that either a draw or an audience. Going into other RPG's, Pathfinder ends up a percentage of D&D, and everything else is going to number in the hundreds of people at best since their market penetration is really small. I suspect we'll find that its popularity is embarrassingly small, and after 2-3 events we never hear about it again. In addition to Nathan Stewart, Brand Director for D&D, updating that figure to 12 to 15 million in North America alone, as Morrus mentions, keep in mind that Critical Role, where people are "rolling dice and recording numbers on a character sheet," pull in somewhere between 55,000 and 65,000 viewers a week regularly, and fill halls with 3000 to 5000 people per appearance. Even half that will still make an audience to garner a following, and more likely to follow if it's something you don't have to devote 4 or 5 hours to, as you would Critical Role. Ignoring just D&D for a moment, others like Glass Cannon Podcast have audiences probably closer to 10 to 12,000, with at least 4,000 solid Patreon members donating enough for them to make a regular business of it as a self-sustaining model. There's a long tail of different RPG viewing audiences out there, not all of which overlap, simply because there wouldn't be enough hours in the day for them to (since so many are 3 to 5 hours long to consume) Again, is it an audience of millions? Nope, and no one claimed it was - but all they need is that 20,000 or 30,000 str...

Morrus you are right, we do not know details about this thing, probably I'm just speculating. what I know for sure is that dnd did not have a new campaign setting in the last 15 years, that 5E Eberron has been published in beta and is disclosed for free piece-by-piece in "UA", etc. and this esport thing not wizards-driven (but announced by their CEO!) does not help the brand in that direction.

Hiya! First: Called it! ;) Second: There has always been "competitive play". Yes. One party goes through a module and gets points. Another party then does the same. Then another. And maybe a fourth. Which ever party scored the most points during the completion of the module wins. That was the "competition". I am not a aware of a single "adventure" that pitted two groups of players sitting across from one another in a Colosseum type setting where they try and kill each other. IMNSHO, trying to equate "D&D eSports Competition" and "AD&D Tournaments" from the late 70's and into the 80's is...disingenuous, to say the least. Both are COMPLETELY different methods for determining a 'winning side'. Third: [quote=Morrus] [Quote Originally Posted by DQDesign] totally agree. I'm seriously thinking about abandoning d&d for other TTRPGs. the standard ones, the ones with stories, friends and bucks far away from the table.[End DQDesign Quote] [Quote Originally Posted by Morrus] You want to abandon D&D because somebody else you've never met plays D&D differently to you?[End Morrus Quote] Morrus, I think what DQDesign was trying to intone was the overall D&D RPG Community and the potential to where D&D, as a RPG, could end up. It's not about "not playing my way". It's about bringing in a potentially overwhelming amount of people who are NOT "roleplayers" and are not actually interested in any of the "roleplaying". As this group increases, it would bring in more money and more and more voices asking for what they want. WotC is a company, owned by an evil faceless juggernaut who wants to expand and acquire more of everything (market share, money, IP's, etc). At some point, WotC would 'switch' to...

Congratulations on the amazingly fast funding of this, Morrus - that was truly impressive to behold!

... While I like 5E I (along with most of my group) are rather disappointed at the pace of rules production released in 5E. Mike Mearls mentioned that thereis a ton of new players and someone in this over twenty page thread made a statement saying that since 5E is doing so well it must mean that players in general don’t favor heavy rules customization. I take issue with that belief. I take issue with it because we really don’t fully know what Hasbro is counting as sales of D&D. Mike Mearls has said before that they don’t have to put out as many splat books because they can release games like Lords of Waterdeep, etcetera as income generators since the Hasbro merger. I am wondering if things like the numerous board games and additional niche products (Dice sets), etcetera are what is making a more significant portion D&D 5E sales now, whereas the RPG books like splat books were the main revenue generator in previous editions? I don’t know if there are any hard numbers on this (perhaps Morrus has some insight) but I would feel secure betting that besides the three core books (DMG, PHB, and MM) the biggest book sales of D&D 5E are probably the books that offer actual rules and option expansions like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Mordenkainen’s Guide, and also the SCAG (as the first book to really offer PC expansions despite how skimpy). I do know that there are a number of third party options but many people don’t use those because they like to use official products for a variety of reasons: 1) It creates consistency from campaign to campaign and between games 2) people may feel that official splat material has been better play tested, etc. What I think is that is that Mike Mearl’s statement is coming from two places. 1) His own personal philosophy and not that of ALL the designers because I know Jeremy Crawford had written much more crunch to the game that was not included and 2) it was pragmatic political statement. What I mean in regards to the latter is ...

I think you are misinterpreting the "fired" comment. He was just saying "Anybody who thinks it's your job to maintain an aura of eliteness by keeping out the 'unworthies'...please go away." He was also observing that there was a high correlation between that crowd and people who enjoy system complexity, probably because system complexity makes a nice barrier to entry for people who want to imagine they are part of an elite crowd. Unfortunately, a lot of people are interpreting it as, "People who like system complexity, please go find another game." EDIT: Overlapped with @Morrus. I'll refrain from further commentary on that aspect.

First of all, thanks Morrus for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes. That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

Oh crap, I didn't know about this book at all! Pre-ordered! Thanks Morrus!

Thanks Morrus and Yunru for getting the posting problem sorted out, now I can take the barbarian guide off my bookmarks.

I have a theory, but I don't like the implications if it's right. It may be that it's simply too big of a post? EDIT: Nope, works fine in a new thread. Could you please sticky the new one and unsticky this one please Morrus?

Knightfall I don't see why not Morrus?

The same products are on both. They're literally the same store. That's what I thought. I was confused by the line: "RPGNow always presented the more "indie" face of the industry, with DTRPG highlighting the larger releases."

You can use skills with any attribute as long as the GM agrees, so intimidation and Disfigured would be a good combo for a strong character. A STR (intimidation) check with the disfigured trait would be a good combo. While I certainly agree that it should be possible to intimidate with your strength, the way tests are written in the rules are for the GM to ask for a specific attribute to be tested, and then the player can suggest an applicable skill to combine with it. It's not really clear that a player can suggest testing a different attribute (though of course the GM can allow anything they want).

I get 10 items. However, 9 of them say "You have reached a page with Adult Content filtered from view. If you wish to view this content, you must log in and modify your account information" Weird. I don't get this notice at all, though I do remember seeing it before with this publisher.

I often think it's too easy to get into the TARDIS. A TARDIS is supposed to be the most advanced type of ship in the universe, so teleporting onto it shouldn't be easy. I wonder if she gave Kerblam! permissions or something? I assume that if she made that order, then some level or permissions were granted. I mean if I can give Amazon access to my door, I expect the far-future tech can do something similar.

10% waiting for the late guy 25% getting ready to play 15% waiting for somebody to come back from a cigarette break 15% random interruptions while somebody tells an unrelated anecdote 20% combat 15% misc gamingThat's pretty close to our group, except I'd swap the percentages of 'getting ready to play' and 'unrelated anecdotes'. These days, we only manage to meet every other month, at best, so there's always a lot of unrelated stuff to chat about.

Yeah. They used to get around that with the "fixed point in time" technobabble but they don't do that any more. I thought they just made a reference to that in the episode, but I don't recall the precise dialog.

Even they don't say that's what they were doing.Unofficially, the writers did say this. They didn't get to write the corportate statement to the media though.

But that wasn't the case in this instance. The issue here is that Chechnya officials deny these events are happening, and claim reports are merely 'Western propaganda'. This book also denies these events are happening, and says reports are 'Vampire propaganda' to hide the truth. That's not highlighting the events, it's reinforcing the narrative of the perpetrators. In this particular instance, that's trivializing the real world issue. Sure, fiction can be used to highlight real issues. This isn't an example of that, though. And those involved have recognised this and acted accordingly.Thats not the case. The book doesn’t deny anything - a fictional character does. And even though there hasn’t been any official statement by the writer, communications with him from other parties involved apparently do point out that the intent was meant to be satirical. Those involved have made a business decision, which was part of an overall decision that had been coming since before the book was even...

But that wasn't the case in this instance. The issue here is that Chechnya officials deny these events are happening, and claim reports are merely 'Western propaganda'. This book also denies these events are happening, and says reports are 'Vampire propaganda' to hide the truth. That's not highlighting the events, it's reinforcing the narrative of the perpetrators. No, it isn't. It's exactly the opposite of that. Making a comparison between "it's all lies from the Western media" and "it's all lies from vampire cabals" rightfully mocks the "Western media" claim, illustrating how those lies are so blatant as to be utterly unbelievable. It weakens the narrative of the perpetrators by pointing out how ludicrous their narrative is, flat-out stating it's no more plausible than if they were saying it was all one big cover-up orchestrated by vampires.

If there's one thing that's apparent in today's world, it's that people channel a LOT of concern into real world issues. There is certainly a lot of concern - but I tend to find that a lot of it, these days, tends to get channelled into things that don't actually provide much progress. Attacking things that are 'offensive' increasingly seems to end up being tribalised. People petition against media presentation rather than source. The Chechnyan and Russian governments said they were offended by this piece of writing, yet they are the ones responsible for the persecution. The book has been removed, the actions against LGBT continue. In terms of using real world events for entertainment, it's worth noting that 'entertainment' can mean a lot of things and doesn't mean it is inherently 'making light' of a serious matter in a dismissive way. Notably, Death of Stalin was also banned in Russia this year too.

The core rules don't really have a default setting aside from the "D&D Multiverse" (in that it refers to multiple published settings, and assumes the use of the Great Wheel cosmology). However, the published adventures have all (except for Curse of Strahd) have been set in the Forgotten Realms. This. I'd say "official" is nothing, but "default" is Forgotten Realms, if I were to distinguish between the two terms. And this.

What is "RNG"? I"m not familiar with that terminology.It usually stands for "Random Number Generator". If that's the case, then in this context, it might refer to the degree by which the randomness of the dice can make the game fall apart. D&D 5E was designed so that the randomness of the dice are unlikely to ruin anything, because characters have stats in a very small and predictable range, and no single die roll is going to kill anyone. Over the course of combat, you roll enough dice that the players are probably going to win, even if they're unlucky. It sounds like this game leaves a lot more up to random chance, so high level characters are more likely to suddenly die. At least, that's what I get out of it.

Presumable every action she takes deletes somebody from the perspective of a time traveller. Sure. But that person is seldom standing right there.

Yeah. They used to get around that with the "fixed point in time" technobabble but they don't do that any more. It would have been interesting in this episode if the Doctor had noted that she could have interfered here - except that doing so would delete Yaz.

I just came there to say that! Please unhide the poll results!

For me it was flight, until I realised that flight without an accompanying invulnerability was a death sentence. One mistake... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JCehDOy54

In don’t think you as a publisher is the target audience of the book. It’s you as a gamer. Yes but I can't divide myself into two different creatures, so if the book is not worth buying for the 'publisher' (I would prefer 'amateur author') it is not also for the gamer :) That mostly because monetary resources are not limitless, at least in my case. Anyway I think no more than a few hundreds wotc customers are also dmsguild authors and most of them will buy the book anyway, I believe, so I don't see any particular worries in wotc about some few twisted individuals like me :)

Because it occurs to me, as an ironically curious consequence of that, that if WotC’s goal was hypothetically to sell books to you specifically, opening the DMsG has therefore lost them sales rather than gained them. As I said, it is mostly due to their low level of transparence. And, also if my products don't sell so much on the guild, with the 50% share wotc already gained much more from me than selling a single one shot book.

Did you buy D&D books before DMs Guild existed? Yes... why? Anyway at that time I focused more on 3rd party products with the largest possible amount of open content because at that time I considered OGL being the best thing in the industry.

Out of curiosity, why? Because I think that DMs Guild is the best innovative element in 5th edition D&D, a real game changer in the industry (evidence of that is the flourishing of dozens of similar programs, including WOIN syndicate, for example). So I will not spend my money on products which are not used as a basis to expand, empower and widen the program. I would re-consider that approach only in case of a significant change in wotc communication strategy, i.e. a serious improvement in their transparence level. For example, I could re-consider buying a not-supported DMs Guild setting if they would explain why they decided not to open the setting on the guild. Summarising, if information are not given, I'll stick with what I like and drop the rest (I'm little bit tired of guessing).