Recent content by Benjamin Olson

Well sure, it's D&D. Literally anything can be played if you want to put in the work to make it playable and everyone at the table agrees. The issues are that a) WotC is leaving the work of supporting this previously popular option up to the players for no real compelling reason, b) defaults...

It's all a matter of setting. Forgotten Realms, and generally most modern "official" campaigns and settings, are so aggressively cosmopolitan that a hybrid person isn't remotely unusual (and so cutting the half-elves and half-orcs was a ridiculous move for 5.5 because they were not just a...

Aside from the storyteller being dubious, so much of what this anecdote really means comes down to exactly what was said many years ago (if it really happened at all) that I wouldn't really trust anyone's testimony based on a single meeting. Did TSR folks actually say that their primary goal...

That's simplifying for combat, but it's just making the prep point decision-making much, much harder. But whatever. I despise the "you should only be able to do like five things and magically forget how to use all the other abilities you've learned for the day" school of ttrpg design, and view...

You can make a D&D clone without those abilties or any abilities and it can be fine and dandy. But if it's going to be called "Dungeons and Dragons" it should have the core elements of Dungeons and Dragons, which to my mind are the six ability scores, classes (including at least some that align...

I agree that 5e has a fundamental rules bloat problem, but people choose Wizard because they want to mess around with a large number of spells, and because the idea of playing a massive spell nerd appeals to them. Trying to streamline spells for a high level wizard actually just kills the class...

I think Solo is actually my favorite Disney era Star Wars movie. Was it "necessary"? Not remotely. And yeah, I get that people found the need to explain every distinctive thing about the character with events that seemingly happened in the course of a few days obnoxious. But it was just easy...

I didn't care for those comic books not just because I didn't like the Emperor coming right back as a weird green clone, but also because (at least as I remember) they involved Luke falling to the Dark Side at the drop of a hat, and generally a giant plotline that didn't really tie in to the...

The shame of it is that Palpatine cheating death could have been a great payoff for the never really resolved Darth Plagueis's powers over life and death plotline from Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, trotting out the same old villain when he should be very dead is lame, but not having the overarching...

If creating April Fools episodes for online content, be aware that most the people who ultimately interact with it will not do so on the first of April. The "ha, ha, you should have known it's April Fools Day" twist hits differently when it's not and the audience had no particular reason to know...

My guess would be that it's a post-apocalyptic themed Survivor clone, where they do challenges to simulate surviving in the wasteland. A vault-based reality series is also possible, but that seems more expensive and harder to have much variety that's on theme for Fallout, as the Vaults tend to...

The "Padme" ploy worked fine though, because she was seemingly known to everyone else as just "Queen Amidala". Where the logic sort of breaks down for me has always been when they reveal in episode 2 that she was elected to a term as teenage queen of her planet. Which by the way, what sort of...

They already have a DC, and the d20 result is already a matter of luck rather than character skill. I narrate based on how widely they beat or miss the DC. As a bonus there are substantial stretches of results where they can just sort of have a normal, unremarkable success or failure.

To the best of my knowledge I've never played with anyone on here, but who knows who might be hiding about.

The ending was realistic enough. The actual government would have to either release a bunch of civilians or give them a trial, which would risk a lot of paranormal secrets and the nature of their actual activities in Hawkins coming to light. They probably also wouldn't want to draw attention to...