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I think I can possibly help you with that. To me, this looks like a pretty classic enlightenment vs romanticism issue. The kind of fantasy you're interested in is rooted in a modern view of the world. In the reality of the 21st century, we know how physical laws work (to a point). We have data...

As I understand it, it's the other way around. Sentience is defined as the ability to perceive or feel things. Dogs are almost certainly sentient, as are pretty much all other mammals and large swaths of the rest of the animal kingdom. Sapience is the ability to reason abstractly, which dogs...

Please forgive my pedantry, but my area of expertise has been mentioned on the internet and I cannot restrain myself! The Rescuers Down Under was for the most part not drawn digitally--it was drawn on tracing paper, as animated films had been for almost a hundred years at that point. It was...

I'm sorry, no. People suffering from mental health problems, including social anxiety, can't just decide to turn them off. If they could, believe me, they would. Then there wouldn't be any need for therapy or psychiatric medication and no one would ever be depressed. How much do you think that...

I'm playing a Cambion in a Dnd game right now, who's character concept might be described as "what if a teenage Joan Jett was also Hellboy?" I built her as a Tiefling with the Infernal Constitution feat and Barbarian/Path of the Beast reflavored as demonic powers. Accordingly, while she isn't...

Yes to the first, no to the second. DMing Dungeon World is indeed more, for lack of a better term, PC-centric then your average game of Dnd. If you're into doing comprehensive world building that doesn't exist specifically to put pressure on the PCs then yeah, it's probably not the game for...

So I think I should preamble here by noting that I'm very much not trying to take a side in the gaming culture war going on in this thread, although, by virtue of being someone who likes pbta games, I suppose I can't avoid being assigned one by default. I nevertheless wish to stress that I am...

My business partner uses emacs in Evil Mode, so the emacs and vi people both hate him. I use vscode, as is appropriate for anyone who isn't an ancient relic of a forgotten age.

Yes. They're called programmers. To observe, try asking about object oriented vs functional programming on stack overflow. It will make anything ever seen on these boards look like a polite conversation over afternoon tea. Yes. Yes it does.

My biggest question is how it would function out of combat. As written, it can't take more then six rounds to get a spell back, right? So in combat a spellcaster's abilities would be significantly curtailed, but out of combat they can spam their most powerful spells every 36 seconds (with an...

It's actually quite complex. It was often assumed that the Mods supported the King, since they were so well dressed, but when someone asked King George whether he was a mod or a rocker he actually claimed to be a "mocker," which has confused historians ever since. That's how King George ended up...

I’ve read maybe half of the listed authors and works, but I don’t think they’ve had much effect on my conception of Dnd. If I try to tease apart the various things that have inspired characters, campaigns, and the general tone of the game for me, it would be more like Dumas (and the many...

There are some simple things I think they could do that wouldn't really remove any existing complexity from the game, but would make it more approachable for first-time players. Get rid of ability scores. They are an endless source of confusion for new players, and don't actually do much of...

I think the implications of this are interesting, particularly in my world. Conventionally, gods have an inherent alignment, while humanoids have a very mutable one. I'm playing with inverting this: humanoids still have a mutable alignment, which is descriptive rather then prescriptive, but gods...

Another thing I appreciate about deathless games is that they let you take the kid gloves off. When I DM conventional games, I always sweat over the difficulty of encounters, because while death is explicitly on the table, I don't want it to be a frequent occurrence. This tends to lead to...

When I DM deathless campaigns—and I’m doing one right now—I use hit points but not death saves. Hitting zero hit points, wether you are a PC or NPC, means you are defeated. What that entails depends on the situation. You might be injured and unable to fight until you receive healing. You might...

Sure, a charging elephant would be terrifying, but they only move quickly in straight lines. If you ran up and slashed at an elephant with a sword, I don't think it could dodge, even incompletely. Gore you on the way in, yes probably. But that's a different kind of defense. Now for some genres...

I suppose it's a semantic difference--I'd use the term "dodge" to describe avoiding something by moving one's body, even if the avoidance was not 100% successfull. But regardless of the word used the issue is that it presupposes a bantha--a lumbering creature that moves at a snails...

Yeah that seems like importing a DnD mechanic into a genre context it doesn't work in. It makes sense that a dragon's scales can turn a sword thrust. But what is that bantha's hide made out of? Beskar? So...in other words, it dodged? 😀 I mean, try imagining a bantha doing what you just...

I do like that approach, and am considering using it as a house rule in 5e.