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I think your premise is interesting! Just curious, would you extend your thesis (“dungeon exploration needs light rules to be fun because they’re dense and can cause grind”) to combat rules?

Next time I run D&D, I'm excited to try Judd Karlman's Bingo Style XP system because it includes a mix of classic/GM-defined goals (e.g. "overcame a challenge with cunning") to player-defined goals (with some guidance on guiding players to develop those, e.g. "Used the wisdom of my comrade’s...

Recently I've been listening to... Daddy Rolled a 1 – lots of D&D history, but mixed in with OSR philosophy, experience, and nifty ideas; I believe Martin, the vlogger, is a former RPG designer just based on his deep industry knowledge https://daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/...

I was already slowly transitioning away from WotC 5e, but the fiascos certainly hastened it. Mostly I’ve been exploring OSR adjacent games like Beyond the Wall, OSE, Freebooters on the Frontier (PbtA-ish), OSRIC (1st edition)… I also played PF2e. I will run a Dungeon Crawl Classics one-shot this...

I support a full rethink more often than I should. You know I tried doing a monster with multiple turns in 5e (after players were used to the Legendary Action/Resistances model) and oooh boy was there some pushback. It was good-natured, but my players did not like that. I was trying to figure...

I was curious if in any of the RPGs you've played you came across great or interesting approaches to Tracking scenes, like the scene where Aragorn tracks the goblins/orcs and Merry & Pippin in LotR: The Two Towers. I'm looking for something deeper or more engaging for the group than"one player...

BOTH! I'm a big fan of Jason Lutes' work on Freebooters on the Frontier which is maybe 90% smorgasbord and 10% rote. Mage rolls for the names of their spells, then round-to-round creates a creative effect based on that name and a universal table and a heavy helping of GM adjudication.

I get what you're saying. Legendary Resistances tries to keep solos fighting longer but it has a couple flaws My thought process is IF you're going to change Legendary Resistances at all, might as well rethink and get rid of it (in its current form). I do want to go one step further though...

OD&D stands for One D&D right? (It’s a trap)

There's a chamber above the Arcane Gem Press – you're not able to find a way inside from here, but the pipes are designed to transfer some kind of dense liquid (not water) from that chamber down into the Gem Press. Based on the convex curve to the ceiling and the scale, the chamber above might...

Familiars.

Definitely no signs of glyphs or similar things. This is a complex device! Based on how your uncle Jorlen had access to the Temple of Dumathoin to a degree it seems many dwarves didn't even have...it's possible Jorlen could instruct you in the operation of the Arcane Gem Press on a return trip...

Probably they batter-E. Wait for it. It's a music pun.

Zeth has had his fair share of gems tested by skeptical jewelers and gem-cutters... This device seems to be designed around a similar principle to test the quality and strength of a gem, but it goes a step further in that it is drawing on some kind of magic to transform a gem placed within it...

Absolutely. There are a whole bunch of checks that can be made here... we can say you all spend 10 minutes examining the room. There are no signs of obvious trap-like things – i.e. no tripwires, no scraped or uplifted flagstones, no pits, etc. Investigation (DC 15) to search for glimmers of a...

What’s the line between “trap” and “cool device that you may possibly kill your party with?” ;)

GM POST Alma's truce with the two ice toads pays off, as she's able to get them to position their squat bodies to chill the first two trapped weep-holes. Neither lights up as your party advances together. The third weep-hole lights up behind the packed snow created by Jack. While it's not...

The other horse-sized ice toad pads toward Alma as if it is woozy. Bloated skin and pale eyes give the impression it has had one too many undead feasts. An aura of biting cold passes over the party with the toad’s passage. Squatting down next to Kr-koa-kwat, the other ice toad emanates a low...