The DMG and XGTE give pretty good guidance on exactly how many and what kind of magic items to give the party in 5e.
There is no "rule" in 5e saying you should not give out magic items. You absolutely need to give out magic items unless you are constantly making specific considerations in the...
IIRC Gavin mentioned that the new manuals would not be crowdfunded. I imagine they'll be available for normal sale as well as as add-ons for the crowdfund on the demon book.
It's important with Shadowdark (and any OSR system) that your adventure design includes encounters which are not always-hostile and/or offer non-combat based solutions to bypass them. I worry with Ptolus originating in the 3e era it will have lots of rooms that are open door -> immediate combat.
I've been running vol 1 for about 8 months or so using OSE. Its been fantastic - easy to riff adventures off the random tables and the included dungeons/locations are very good.
This is why I see them more akin to Random Encounters. They can be inserted into an adventure with a wider overall play pattern as a diversion, sidequest, etc
Honestly at this point if you played 5e at launch, you're also an oldtimer.
There has been "save or die" disable spells at level 1 since oD&D. If anything, it was worse in the TSR era with Sleep than anything anyone can do in 5e.
Same. When I buy a Setting book I want setting info, NPCs, hooks, things like that. Maybe an intro adventure, at most.
I don't want the bulk of the book taken up by an adventure I'll never run (Strixhaven was the worst offender for this in 5e IMO).
The new FR book is much better in that...
Re: Questing Beast's review
When you think of the mini-adventures less as an "adventure" and more "fleshed out random encounter", they're a lot more likable. They seem designed for 1-2 hours of play, not 3-6 like a 1 page dungeon will often be.
Was curious how prior editions handled circle magic in FR.
3rd limited it to a couple of very specific prestige classes to be the primary caster, and you needed a specific feat to be a secondary caster. Huge change to just make it available to literally any spellcaster lol.