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There is some truly excellent design in the independent/OSR scene that gets close to this ideal. Two examples that come to mind are Winter's Daughter by Gavin Norman and The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford by Chance Dudinack.

This is probably for the best. I've found the overall narrative design of their big 5E campaign books severely lacking... the individual setpieces / encounters / dungeons are great but the overarching plots are often inconsistent, convoluted, invisible to players or poorly structured requiring...

No offense but that's a nothingburger of a premise. Surely you have more of a sense of place and conflict? It's the GM's job to come up with interesting, evocative questions to pose and discover the answers through play. These characters didn't just spawn into a videogame. How did they get in...

Yeah, data protection shouldn't be a hurdle if they accept entries from France and Germany - other EU countries have the same protections under GDPR. I can't imagine which law or regulation applies to prizes in this context... I live in the Netherlands and the limitations only apply to...

Not open to entries from my country... weird that they only allow a few EU countries to participate, wonder what the reasoning behind that is.

Agreed, military marching speed is around 15 miles on passable terrain and maybe one and a half times that for a forced march. But then again, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas distance run after an army of urukhai so maybe heroes can push harder than real world soldiers.

My job as a DM is to offer my players interesting, agonizing or exciting choices. They can pour all their creativity into picking the option that's right for them and I'll channel mine into rolling seamlessly with whatever they come up with or what the dice dictate.

Incremental advances from 13th Age: you can pick a feature from your next level up as a DM-sanctioned reward. This way, you don't suddenly have a bunch of new powers, skills and hit points blinking into existence at level-up like it's a videogame and players can get used to having more options...

Until recent advances, locks didn't have perfectly engineered tight fitting microscopic components so I imagine thieves would just carry tools that looked like carpenters, iron workers or maybe clockmaker tools. That would suffice to attack most locks, hinges, bolts or even mountings effectively...

I was thinking about some features that are already lowkey implemented in telepresence software, like AI-assisted direction e.g. when I bend over the table to point at a token, the viewport knows where I'm pointing and puts it in focus. Or features AR-like features where we can look at the same...

I wasn't thinking of 3D graphics or VR and such but I'm just observing that we're not very successful in emulating the 'feel' of a face-to-face game with our current generation of VTTs (or remote conferencing solutions for that matter.) I just have a hunch that we'll soon look back on this era...

Such an evocative setting. I'd really love to run Symbaroum but haven't been able to pitch it successfully... maybe this conversion will give it the mindshare it deserves. Treating the wilderness as if it were as weird, unpredictable and terrifying as the Underdark in tradtional settings is a...

I expect we'll get another peak/bump/renaissance when someone makes an accesible VTT that's not just iterating on the concept of miniatures/tokens and sheets of paper (or god forbid, 300+ page books) moving on a tabletop but aims a little higher with a new design paradigm. I can't describe...

Sure, The Honey Queen is a gonzo dungeon crawl in a giant bee hive with a morally grey adversary and Challenge of the Fang plays with the themes of Little Red Riding Hood and pagan religion. These adventures stand or fall with how much they engage the imagination of the players - running them...

If you don't mind exploring a new setting, I recommend you take a look at Kobold Press's offerings, particularly Tales of the Old Margreve for short adventures. Their Eastern-European/grim fairy tale flavored world is good for experienced players because most of the tropes and familiar creatures...

One trick I've used to have someone else save the day / mitigate the threat / deal with the fallout of the player's choice. That makes the world feel 'bigger' because it shows not every problem relies on the player characters showing up. It also lets me (re-)introduce some characters from the...

We're only hearing one side but let's say the situation is as described: A DM only has one audience: his players. If he's not helping them to have fun, he doesn't belong behind the screen. If that somehow evolves into 'building a brand' (gag) while growing an audience of onlookers, cool - but...

I look at it this way: dice rolling is one of the most visceral and immediate things a player can do in a tabletop RPG... I've never had a player at the table who didn't enjoy throwing down bones. But letting them roll without a target or a clue what they're rolling for diminishes the fun. It...

To me, the key components of what is now called OSR are 'rulings over rules' and 'the answer is not on your character sheet'.... two things 5E can still accommodate but doesn't usually encourage. In my games, that means if you rely on the rules to solve a situation, I will not pull punches...

Just want to say: 'Tombpunk' is a great and evocative title.