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In a game where exploration is a central pillar of play, encounter balance serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper to immersion, storytelling, and creativity. This thesis relies on the idea that encounter balance, defined as having a rigid system that can output the potential difficulty of a fight...

I am in no way affiliated with Mage Hand Press. My absolute favorite book, and one that I believe everyone here that runs 5E should own, is Valda's Spire of Secrets, by Mage Hand Press. For those of you who don't know, Mage Hand Press got started like a decade ago and put out wild, but usually...

This is paradoxically common knowledge and something most people do not know or just simply forget — that how you handle resting dictates the feel of your game. While it'll always be combat-slanted (in reality, conflict-slanted), when your players can recover influences the pacing of your...

Here's what I mean-- The core, mainline 1st edition game should be streamlined and simplified, as is happening in 1D&D. By making things easier to understand, a little bit more fluid, and a little bit more organized, they encourage both third party developers, their own freelancers, and...

I've been doing amateur (and professional) game design for 8 years now. In those eight years, I've consumed a lot. Much of what I've consumed has been paradigms from many different parts of the community, from OSR to narrative to vanilla 5E and beyond, across many, many games. Many of these...

My new project for DnD 5E, Crimson Catalyst, is live! Invoke the power of alien forces to save your world from extinction in this 5E setting book. Overcome cataclysms with Scavenger: Crimson Catalyst, an otherworldly Bronze Age epic for DnD 5E. This book creates a visceral science fantasy...

A new month is coming and we have no active Psionics thread? WHAT??? So, here's the idea. People always say how adding non-spell spells (psionics) is too much mechanical complexity for the game and is confusing. This is, even though I don't fully agree, such a widespread sentinment across D&D...

I was rereading Descent Into Avernus (henceforth: DiA) because I really, really, really like the idea of Mad Max + Bloodwar. However, while rereading it, I came to a startling realization for why that adventure ultimately was, in my eyes, a failure. DiA is trying to be like Mad Max: Fury Road...

Howdy everyone! Here is the first chapter of our third major project, TORN & BEYOND. Specifically, this is the first chapter of The Shardlight Epic — an adventure-campaign setting designed not only for ease of DM use, but also to create one-shots, short stories, and epic campaigns with the...

The question is in relation to how easy it is (requiring little to no editing) to how difficult it is (requiring editing or extensive prep to make work). No neutral option, as I'm really only interested in seeing how much people rely on edits to run their adventures.

10 years ago, WotC was making just barely 30 mil a year off D&D. Now they're making hundreds of millions a year, and, alongside magic, have completely redefined Hasbro. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47698/wotc-makes-more-money-hasbros-toy-business

SCAVENGER: Nomads of Uncharted Worlds is a beautifully illustrated art book and also an original campaign setting for D&D 5E set in a ravaged bronze age world where the only hope is an ancient gateway to other mysterious dimensions throughout the multiverse. Explorers, wanderers, treasure...

Link to the SageAdvice here: https://www.sageadvice.eu/2019/11/30/jeremy-crawford-we-havent-closed-the-door-on-a-class-like-mystic-psion/ As I said before, I'd eat my words if WotC said they'd make a dedicated Psion class. While I enjoy the one I've homebrewed recently, I'm happy to be getting...

If what WotC said in the recent article about how they have 12-15 million players in NA is true, then they are way more massive then what 3rd party success would lead one too believe. On a lot of forums outside of EnWorld (and sometimes, even on EnWorld), 3rd party material is always treated as...

PDF for the playtest is here. It contains 6 new sub-races, one new race, a bunch of new archetypes, feats, and backgrounds, and then three variant rules (Verbal Duels ; Magical Carpet Combat ; Natural Hazards). I'd like it if you guys could read over this playtest pdf, maybe play it yourself...

Al-Qadim is one of my favorite settings, and I really wanted to create a conversion that I thought captured the soul of the setting. The final book isn't done yet, but I just posted a huge playtest document for its character options. I would love it if you guys could play with it and let me know...

In Chris Perkins AMA today on Reddit, he released the new (and only) character option that will be in Curse of Strahd: the Haunted One background. What do you guys think about it? Quite frankly, I love it, and can't wait to use it in a game.

Hey everyone! So I run a small outfit that puts out fanmade books of homebrew material! Our next book, GrimmDark: A Book of Fairy Tales, is a book dealing with fey and fairy tales. It introduces new lore, monsters, character options, magical weapons, and much, much more! We want to show you guys...