Recent content by S'mon

My big problem with Curse of the Crimson Throne was book 4 in the Cinderlands which seemed pointless, I ended up not using it. Book 5 Scarwall was a bit of a slog but it has a clear quest to get the item you need to complete the AP.

That's true and there was something of an uptick later, with products like Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd being better regarded. XGTE was a high point. But then it seemed to get worse again with the very weak later stuff like Spelljammer and Dragonlance. And many 3rd party publishers...

Yeah. Personally I don't really think he's a bad guy the way Vox Day really is a bad guy (I interacted with VD enough many years ago to satisfy myself on that) but he can definitely be an a-hole and his claims need to be treated with a lot of caution.

I've heard from people with WotC connections how the corporate culture regularly ruins products. It's amazing to me how they could take someone as talented as Rich Baker (Red Hand of Doom, Forge of Fury, Primeval Thule) and put out something as mediocre as Princes of the Apocalypse.

RPGPundit then lambasts her for praising an anti-Semite (he's made various snide comments). Kelsey has a very hardcore no politics rule and won't engage with discussion about political stuff either way. She gets on well with Harmony Ginger who gets on well with Jeffro, despite Jeffro often being...

I find Fireball is best Vs a similar sized party of peer or near peer opponents. Yes it is weak Vs a single target, and very weak foes shouldn't need a level 3 spell. But I am playing a Keep in the Borderlands campaign where our two casters just hit 5th and I expect it will make a huge difference.

Adventures can of course scale by PC tier. Even then it is good to run lower level stuff with high level PCs now and then so they get a sense of progression. In my Loudwater 4e campaign the threats did scale up while the PCs remained more or less at the same location level 1-30, but while you...

The one I've used most has to be orange Palace of the Silver Princess. I even ran it in Primeval Thule using Mini Six rules, with the Silver Princess an elf, the dragon rider an Atlantean knight, and the ruins about to be absorbed in the Endless Ice.

I mashed up Rise of the Runelords PF version with Shattered Star and ran that in 5e as a 1-20 adventure, at the end I used some Return of the Runelords stuff too. Worked well, I did make the Rune Giants a bit OP maybe. The PCs reached the Spire of Avarice and mucked up badly, resulting in the...

My view is the game has been very badly mismanaged for years, Crawford seems the single person most responsible. So this seems very hopeful news. I guess it could just be they are going to mothball the brand. But I hope at least we get no more "half races are racist" type stuff driving design...

If you are a mid sized company going to threaten people with legal action, I recommend paying for a real lawyer who can give you legal advice and potentially draft a real cease and desist. It will look much scarier than a random Internet document.

They can come across pretty ADHD - very much "oo, New Shiny!" :D

The only Ranger I ever liked was the 4e PHB Ranger. Just a really good martial Striker. Next up I guess was the overpowered 1e "Aragorn" Ranger.

I often use AI for NPC art, and it can be pretty good, though obviously real artists are usually better. I find it hilarious when people say it's immoral to use AI generated art for personal use, because AI exploits real artists, but are happy to lift real art off the internet... in my view both...

Yes that's what I've done, I'm not short of human players but I've GM'd an AI, eg through a BFRPG scenario (escape from a bandit lair) and it did pretty well. It could often pick up on hints, eg it knew to use hair pins to pick a crude lock. It also made mistakes, and sometimes needed stuff...