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As others have already replied, there are lot of RPGs out there, and if your players are willing to try out new systems, not all games need to center on the use of violence as the primary mode of play. Most RPGs include violence because it's a quick way to raise the dramatic stakes in the...

Yep -- have the buyers be minions of the evil souls, who have been searching high and low for their missing masters. They restore the recovered souls back into physical bodies, bringing their evil back into the world.

In my run, I fleshed out Phandelver more, especially the bandits running the town. I made a quick relationship map for quick reference to show who the townspeople were, and how they were connected to one another. I wanted to develop the bandits in the town as a faction, to allow the PCs to...

Older versions of Waterdeep made the city slightly grittier. Geographically it's loosely modeled after Lankhmar from the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser swords & sorcery stories by Fritz Leiber. Greenwood made it much more friendly, with a colorful high-fantasy setting. However, you could choose to...

Reward Exploration. In addition to shortcuts, there should be ways to bypass very dangerous encounters, easter eggs with treasure and bonus information, secret treasures, etc. When giving the players information, give them enough information to know that there is a new area to explore, but...

In my historical games (often CoC) we have a session zero and discuss what we want in the game. For my players, who are all into history, and who are older, very mature, and experienced in managing difficult emotions (and have a lot of mutual trust built up over the years), we can deal with the...

"From now on, verily I decree that all beings must wear the sacred polka dot boxers and celebrate. To ensure loyalty, we must wear them on the outside of our pants, so we can check! Or else. Amen."

McDonald's and McDowell's (from Coming to America)

Yep -- you pretty much can take the results and make up a story as you go along. It's kind of a mini-game where you roll on tables (and press your luck a bit) to see what happens, and that inspires the players creatively to make an emergent backstory.

Isn't the point of a forum to have discussions?

Sorry all for succumbing to a bit a hyperbole in my earlier posts. This is exactly the main point I was making -- D&D is a hobby that we play with small groups of people who usually all know each other, get along with, and are having escapist fun with. What we do in a game, in the privacy of...

Good points, all.

Sorry, I kinda am a little bit, got a little carried away. However, the main point I want to make is about being resilient and mature when it comes to handling feelings during a game that we're just playing for entertainment. The OP does seem to claim that any portrayal of a low-intelligence...

That's really what I'm getting at too. The OP says that we shouldn't even say the words "stupid" or "smart", because it will be too traumatizing for someone just to hear the words spoken aloud. Maybe I'm unique, but I've had to deal with far worse things in life plenty of times (life and death...

I remember Gygax said something like that (1 INT = 10 IQ) in one of the old books or articles. The OP seems to be saying that if you ever portray a comically stupid character in a game of make-believe, that it's going to permanently harm someone, and then proceeds to repeat a scolding "ableist"...

Well, I wouldn't call it a "critique" exactly -- the OP makes a lot of assertions and demands, and is signalling they they support a popular political position in which it's considered virtuous to scold people for being "ableist". To critique the critique, one could just as easily argue that...

You could do the classic trope of the players having to find the parts of a magical artifact, assemble the artifact, and save the world. Instead of an artifact, have the players rediscover ancient magic spells. As they acquire more of them, they can cast them in unison to create stronger spell...

I streamline initiative by doing partial group initiative. Both sides roll initiative with a DEX mod, and then half the winning side goes, then half the losing side, back and forth. When everyone rolls initiative, the highest roll represents the whole party's initiative. This lets DEX help...

We all have a session zero where we mutually agree this is ok, and no one has a problem with it.

Such as?