Recent content by Distracted DM

I personally hate DMing "evil" campaigns- being the narrative processor for the PCs actively sowing terror, abusing folk, torture, cannibalism, trying to actively make things worse just to "be the bad guys"... it burned me out when one campaign went in that direction. The worst I can handle is...

I like that they included some narrative requirements for the DK and Lich paths. Though I can easily see players just passing over them and taking the feat as part of the level-up process without any actual action taken in-game to do so (other than gaining levels). "Oh yeah I'm level 16 and now...

Gotta compare these feat chains to the A5E ones. I know there's a lich feat chain, I haven't seen a death knight one though. In one of yours @Timespike ?

Can you elaborate on that? Very curious- I can maybe guess what you mean, but don't want to put words in your mouth 😅

Some folk are criticizing that it's a pose, as opposed to an action piece. Who decides the subject and style of the work? Did the artist decide that, or the client? I assume the client in this case, or maybe they had a back-and-forth- they probably didn't say "just do whatever you want."

It seemed like executive leadership changes. Leadership was open to doing stuff with Mangianello (the dragonlance show). Then Hasbro did some shuffling, changed leadership, new leadership didn't want to do it. Now leadership has changed again.. and it seems like they're keen on working with...

A book can have a big name attached to is and still be good. I get that the instinct is to assume it's gonna be trash, but I can't tell you how often I've referred to the Gygax Book of Names... And Gary had very little to do with that book, or that entire line afaik. I haven't actually checked...

Would love to check what what you came up with @MadBeard

Waiting to hear back from OP 😆 One of the better suggestions to spice things up was terrain. To make it easy on the GM, some patches of dangerous terrain (literally, not just slowing speed) that the baddies are immune to.

One of Arcadia magazines issues ?maybe issue 8?, had funnel rules that are worth looking at- I used them to great success. Then again more recently I ran a funnel with each player running 2-3 level 1 characters and that worked fine too. What is say is perhaps have pregens AND let your players...

In my experience, they'd wipe the floor with this encounter... But I have very optimized and tactically-minded players. If they make all the wrong choices, I'm sure it could be a challenge.

We often start at 1, yes, unless I want a particularly heroic start to the game. Those first couple levels are delightfully gritty. That's when the players are actually looking at their mundane inventories and scrambling for whatever they can make use of to get every advantage in a situation.

I had a 2+yr West Marches campaign going before covid hit. Some people played a couple times a month, some a couple times a week... About a dozen players. 2 years and when covid hit the highest characters were level 11 or 12. So how? 1. Multiple characters. Think of it like an MMO if that...

My experience with GL is limited to the animated stuff, but GL in Justice League and on earth was always "fine." But then when you go out to the cosmos and deal with being space cops and a planet that has a GL ring and all that science fantasy/fiction stuff... that was different and fun. But...

Recently I've been seeing ads for this every time I open reddit. Every. Time. Obviously ads are targeted, so maybe some people may not see them, but like others I thought it was some AI game like all the others getting pushed in those same ad-spaces. Still not my cup of tea, but more power to...