Recent content by Distracted DM

Consider only breaking out the battlemaps when a fight is happening. or maybe dungeon-crawling. Until then, consider using pretty art/scenes (I like jamesrpgart's stuff). I also feel the need to have battlemaps etc prepped but I find that using scenes that give a rough vibe of the area helps...

I nearly always GM.. at least, that's how it's been for 18 or so years (I got into TTRPGs when I was young, almost 30yrs ago). I found that I really only enjoy being a player at in-person games, online games don't hold my attention well enough unless I'm GMing.

This is definitely just a matter of opinion, yours is perfectly valid, to me this reads as very reductionist. Apologies if I misunderstand, but this reads as saying a dwarf is the same as a human is the same as an elf is the same as a dragonborn etc. just with sharp ears, scales, etc, that they...

For those that like tolkienesque or humanocentric settings, I think this is the best justification- I've used it to make peace with the wide range of character ancestry options that players tend to assume "everything goes" "kitchen-sink" etc. in a game. Yes! But... if the GM wants to run a...

I know they (?James Wyatt?) did a bunch of free Planeshift articles years back, did they do Lorwyn? How does this compare to those articles? I know there were a few, including the desert setting.. maybe that was the one with the busted Zeal Cleric 🤣

Yup. I've had that often enough- except the player(s) generally try to justify it, forcing that square peg into the round hole, they don't just say "I don't care." But their justifications are clearly only there because this is the character that they wanted to play.

I use XP as well, I guess it's just odd that choosing rough session numbers means you don't use XP? Or choosing XP means that ... you don't have a rough estimate for how many sessions it takes to get to 4.

7-9 sessions to get to level 4 (assuming 3-4hrs each). Voted 7-8. Yes, my online play is a bit slower than in-person for a multitude of reasons. Edit: Let's see, 1-2 sessions to get to 2. 2-3 sessions to get to 3. 3-4 sessions to get to 4. Yeah, that's 6-9 sessions. I might be going a little...

Level Up sort of does use its setting(s) which are expressed through available character options. But they weren't created for 5e afaik, since iirc they were made for earlier editions. Their Voidrunners Codex might count though?

For me the answer is easy. I've had plenty of pets pass away naturally, or by deciding it was time... But I've only had one hit by a car in front of me. And that still haunts me. It's a trauma I can't shake. Umbran I'm sorry for your pain, I hope sharing it here brings you a little solace.

My first suggestion: just use the wild magic sorcerer's wild magic for every caster, or every arcane caster, whatever. Yes it neuters one subclass of one class, just remove that subclass if you don't want to redesign it (you could make them better at controlling surges of you wanted to keep...

Oh wow, there's a lot on there..

I think this bears some thought, though I don't agree with your conclusion. Unfortunately a lot of folk aren't going to have context since they don't have the books, but I'll provide a couple screenshots to help the conversation:

I like saying things are Bloodied at half. It also has mechanical effects with A5E (and some other 5e iterations, I think). If players were to track how much damage they'd done so far, and they know when it's bloodied, they can roughly figure out the HP.. we did track damage dealt as players...

The new FR book's Dragon Cult background gives inspiration whenever you fear someone, and provides a method of fearing things IIRC.