Burnside's latest activity

As a designer, when making stuff for 5E I do my best to create encounters that allow multiple solutions, and can be solved by skilled...

I hate to say it, but I think the OP poisoned the well by assuming "GM-may-I" is a part of skill play in the title. It can be, and is a...

I looked at it as a total package. The background is AI slop art with no unity from shot to shot and the script is a rambling...

I generally start at 1 but get to 2 fairly quickly (after ~4 hours of play). I’ve run Dungeon of the Mad Mage (never completed the...

Yeah, this is a weird one. For that matter, maybe like 30% of America is hot and dry. Certainly not Lake Geneva, WI.

I would agree that there are better systems out there if you want to run a full-on Conan-esque setting. But there have also been scads...

I don't know. I think mutually understood definitions of terms allows us to have fruitful conversations, rather than descending...

Yeah - my dad is a Boomer, and not remotely counter-cultural, but liked Tolkien and owned the 1968 U.S. paperback boxed set of the three...

The idea that D&D popularized Tolkien is wild, indeed.

Tolkien was like 100 times more popular than D&D in the US in the 70s. It just wasn't comparable. LotR was a cultural phenomena, D&D was...

Tolkien was HUGE with hippies. Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” is from 1969, with lyrics about Lord of the Rings in it, and the college...

This is literally my entire point. Characters in your game don’t ask each other what character class they are or talk about their Wisdom...

Nah, LotR was largely unknown in the US until it was embraced by hippie culture in the early 70s and became suddenly massively popular...

1E had monks because karate and ninja stuff was a big craze in the U.S. in the 1970s. It had spaceships and laser guns because some...

I can’t think of ANY past 5E adventure where any characters have ever done this, so, again, I’m failing to see the big, “anachronistic”...