Recent content by Benjamin Olson

I think Westerns did the heavy lifting in establishing taverns in sci-fi and fantasy as the place where adventurous travelers meet in town, and the first place they go when they get to a town. I'm not saying more medieval fantasy oriented media, whether Tolkien or Canterbury Tales, or something...

This seems cool, and I don't hate it at first blush as much as I do most 5.24 innovations. But magic is so deeply baked into the game, and there are so many spells it might effect in ways the designers almost certainly didn't anticipate that I worry about just slapping a new casting system on...

I'd have it begin with the fireball or whatever AoE that finished off the party being uncast, and getting most of the party up (along with maybe a mook enemy or two). Basically given that this is so experimental and odd I'd want to make sure it's a quick three round or less fight, with players...

I'd quibble with the degree, but combat is decidedly not front and center of the Star Trek Adventures game. Arguably the game steers you away from it more than the shows steer away from it. I've been playing Star Trek adventures for four of five sessions and we've had no violent combat other...

As a DM I like when the players have tiny hut because it means I don't have to come up with as many encounters during long rests. Since a rational DM, if there is regular tiny hut usage, will change their prep to only have mid-rest encounters that are interesting even with a tiny hut or that...

Tal'Dorei is pretty much just another generic fantasy setting. That's not a knock in my book, that means that I don't have to do a bunch of research to get how things work, just because some designer had to show off how original they could be. But the real selling point to me is simply...

I do think people who haven't worked with 2020s middle schoolers would struggle to imagine how difficult many of them find reading at all, much less reading of reference type materials and on paper no less. Really while you should definitely give them something to work off of, the assumption...

I would have more respect for the new edition if it really did its own things according to some sort of coherent vision rather than just being obvious improvements, a few half-baked ideas, and a bunch of random remix for the sake of sowing confusion. But I was pretty happy just sticking to 2014...

Hey, fellow classroom teacher here. While I have not actually done D&D in a school setting I did run and/or supervise it at a summer camp over several summers for similarly aged kids. That was under the aegis of a creative writing project, so we used nothing prepublished except the rules, and I...

I saw it in the theater because I have an unlimited moviepass. As a big screen spectacle it had just enough juice to get me to mostly turn my brain off and have a good time, but I remember thinking halfway through "this wouldn't be worth watching at home, and wouldn't be worth actually paying to...

Whether AI slop, human made slop, or something in between, it is intrinsically infuriating to see someone speak this authoritatively at length based on such an elementary misunderstanding.

So on the one hand 5e D&D is pretty explicit when things like this don't stack. On the other hand it is consistent enough in not letting things like this stack that having it stack feels out of keeping with the design philosophy, so this feels like an oversight and generally a counterintuitive...

Well on the theory that the original post might be some sort of meme-parody I googled "This is not a threat; this is the truth" as the distinctive phrase that seems least likely to have been changed. The results all seem to involve Uganda or vampire media. In any case I don't care enough to...

The class progression of 5e D&D is often very linear without a lot of choice. Yes you get to choose a subclass, yes you get to choose spells if you're the right type of spellcaster, yes you get to choose feats and for certain subclasses additional features like a Battlemaster's maneuvers, but...

No, it starts with him robbing a dying person who thought he was being saved by him, which establishes that he's edgy and morally neutral more than well enough. Actually, outside of the implications of a couple joke bits, I don't recall the movie having any sexual content at all, which I...