Recent content by Jacob Lewis

@earthsea_wizard Fair enough, I get that you wanted to leave the question open for people to bring their own definitions. But even then, how you frame the question matters. When you set up categories like “long campaigns” and “kitchen sink vs. narrow settings” without definitions, you’re not...

I think the premise here is a little too thin to support the question being asked. A few problems jump out: 1. Defining a “long campaign.” You set the bar at 2–10+ years, but years are a poor metric. Some groups meet weekly, others monthly. Some run marathon sessions, others barely squeeze in...

@jian The issue with your suggestion isn’t that it couldn’t work, but that it assumes hit points have a fixed meaning that can be cleanly extended. The truth is, HP in D&D (and most systems that borrowed them) are deliberately undefined beyond “are you still alive?”. That abstraction only holds...

I first came to EN World (under a different account) over twenty years ago, when the site was new. I was deeply engaged with D&D during the transition to 3rd edition, having played since the days of B/X and AD&D. At that time, it was primarily a source of news and updates, a way to track the...

I don’t think we can really know what the designers’ intent was at the outset. All we can do is look back at the rules as they were written and evaluate them through decades of design evolution and changing philosophies. What might have felt innovative or essential in 1974 hasn’t necessarily...

That’s a fair point—domain play and “name level” benefits absolutely existed, and they gave players a direction beyond the dungeon. I’m not denying their presence in the rules. The distinction, though, is between possibility and priority. The support for strongholds, hirelings, and domain play...

I’ve always loved the Dark Sun setting, but ironically, I don’t think D&D’s rules are the right fit for it. Athas is a world where survival extends far beyond combat. In fact, combat should usually be the worst possible option—something characters resort to only out of desperation or when forced...

I think the “GP outweighed kills in XP” point gets repeated as if it’s a silver bullet, but I don’t think it proves what people often think it does. Gold was never the goal in itself—it was the token that converted into XP, and XP was always what players actually cared about. What does XP buy...

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I think part of what’s going on here is less a design failure and more a reflection of what D&D has always been about at its core. The game loop is pretty simple: kick down doors, beat up monsters, take their stuff, and level up so you can do it again at a bigger scale. That’s the engine that...

@Pamphylian I think you’ve put your finger on a real throughline in D&D design, not just a quirk of 5e. From the very beginning, the game has included subsystems that look like they should create scarcity or tension, but then immediately introduces ways to trivialize them. Darkness is...

So my understanding is that there’s no prescribed context for this rating system—it’s left to each voter to define their own standards. That works fine for me. I don’t look for truth or validation through public consensus, nor do I feel the need to align with a selective audience whose opinions...

I think your dungeon example illustrates the distinction I was trying to get at. Yes, players have meaningful choices within the map-and-key framework—where to go, what to risk, which tools to secure first. But those choices are all still contingent on the GM having designed the structure, keyed...

I think you may be reading more into my comment than was there. I didn’t claim styles were chosen “arbitrarily,” or that GM authority is only about ego. What I said was that early RPG texts and discourse did codify a GM-centric model, and that framing has had lasting influence on how we still...

The difficulty with pinning down “railroading” is that the word isn’t just about technique—it’s about power dynamics inherited from the history of RPGs. Early RPGs established a very GM-centric model. The GM built the world, enforced the rules, and delivered the experience. Players were...