Recent content by ccooke

It happens. So... Did you find any LARPs you liked?

Not for everyone, and not all the time. Huge numbers of DMs run campaigns written by other people, after all. I usually run in worlds of my own making, but doing that takes time and effort, and there is a limit to how many I can run concurrently - so when some coworkers wanted to pkay, I ended...

8. It's not perfect, but it's fun to watch and I'd enjoy seeing it again. If it stands up to rewatching, I'll happily compare it to things like Indiana Jones - great fun, action and comedy, not a masterpiece but also not trying to be - it wants to be a fun film that lots of people enjoy. I'm...

No, it's an understanding of what D&D is and what they're trying to create. D&D is a mainstream game, and 5e has grown so popular in large part by being "more mainstream" than previous editions. It focuses on appealing to the largest possible playerbase, and a lot of effort goes in to tuning it...

So... Let's say that you did get your favourite group of ENWorld people together... ... how long would the discussion/argument about what exactly to play last?

... I suspect that there are a few people here who I could have a really good argument with. The proper kind, where both (every?) side enjoys it and maybe learns something. That's not always a great indicator of people I love gaming with (but it's definitely not a strike against :) )

I think people expect both too much and too little of corporations, especially fan-linked ones like WotC. A corporation doesn't think anything, but the people within it do. Mostly there will be a wide range of opinions within a corporation on what it should do - often contradictory. Sometimes...

It's really very different, though. Skill challenges were a way of making non-combat encounters work in similar ways to combat encounters, while the new actions in the playtest are all about encapsulating an explaining the way that players can solve the sort of social or environmental problems...

It adds a bit more action flexibility. As Sorcerers Apprentice said, it doesn't eat a bonus action. That means a paladin could - on one turn - BA activate Divine Sense, detect a threat, move to them, action attack and (free action) smite. That sounds like a turn a paladin player would want to...

Hey, everyone. I'd like to try an experiment. So it seems that many threads are devolving into reiterations of what-constitutes-and-edition warring, and it's sometimes quite hard to find actual discussion about the mechanics themselves. I'm absolutely not saying that the arguments over whether...

Ugh. Reading through the last five pages of arguments with ever decreasing amounts of actual discussion on this particular packet was really not fun, especially with a headache already. But damnit, there's a change in this one that I absolutely love, and nobody else seems to have mentioned it...

There was a rather nice boxed set a few years back - Stunning artwork highlights new Special Edition D&D Core Rulebooks Gift Set (I have a copy, and the only downside is they're too nice to use much)

I think that saying there's no benefit to WotC for releasing an updated OGL version is just plain wrong, to be honest. Wizards are not, per se, in this to sell us all new core books. They are making this update because they want to keep selling us new books, and the timing is the cleanest most...

Honestly, I think this concept misses the point a bit. Thinking about how much the DM should speak (or GM in any other system that has a "person who runs the game") is focussing on the wrong problem. The role of a GM is to maximise the enjoyment of the participants (including, of course...

TCoE was clearly aimed at levelling the playing field, so to speak, for classes and races and I think it did a pretty good job of it. It's a lot harder to weaken something once it's out in print. They could have gone further with some of the changes, but that risks making options too OP. As it...