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My house rule for 5e fumbles: - You always lose consecutive attacks after the natural 1 - You get inspiration if you choose to fumble - if you do, draw a card from the fumble deck

Strength in swordsmanship Skill outmatches size or strength in armed combat ^ The same applies to feats of strength like powerlifting, weightlifting, parkour, gymnastics etc. As a person who strength trains, strength is a skill. Training it improves your capacity to use it, but learning to...

You could take the abstract Apocalypse/Dungeon World route: have a couple of stats for the scouts, like competence and loyalty (which could be a resource), and roll 2d6 + the stat. 10+ is success, 7-9 there's a complication (roll on a table?), and 6- is a failure (the scout got injured...

Cool - but I'd draw the landscape view in the same scale as the map. Here's an example from B10 Night's Dark Terror:

There's at least one you missed: http://imgur.com/gallery/bSnW0Or - Jason Thompson's walkthrough for The God that Crawls, an adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess tabletop RPG.

I use knowledge points (re: GUMSHOE) in my campaign so downtime research was an easy fit. For every 5 you get from your roll, you get one knowledge point you can use to 'know' a thing. The points can be free-floating, generic like the skills (arcana, history, nature, etc.), or specific (dwarves...

People learn bad habits and wrong expectations from both rpgs and computer games. One way to address this is to switch games even for a while. Fiasco is - in my humble opinion - one of the best ways to teach people to improvise and show how much fun it can be. You could also play any rpg that...

This comparison never makes sense. Paizo took a 10 yo game that another company had designed and produced, and sold it under a different name. WOTC designed a new edition, rethought the mechanics, the brand, and had a huge playtest - and even then you get the basic rules for free.

Get to know the so-called heroes first, and write down everything you know about them. Then just keep your head down, and write a letter to your superiors. You're not suicidal, you just want to get the dragon party started. If the party suspects something, leave the town.

I've ran The Sunless Citadel (the first 1st level adventure for 3rd edition) countless times. It's a great beginner adventure and easily ran with 5e since most of the monsters are in the MM. I haven't ran it yet with 5e so I can't say if it's possible to run through in one session. Depends on...

What is the thing that is actually lacking? You need more mechanics for something? If you want a death sorcerer, a diamond sorcerer, or a nuclear sorcerer, you can always just rename/repaint the class abilities and change the damage types. A death sorcerer might even have some of the npc class...

I allow whatever my campaign needs. I think about the roles the fantasy roles would play (usually easily replaceable by humans), and go from there. In my playtest campaigns there were only humans but I would have allowed a human-looking tiefling character. Maybe even humans with fantasy race...

Here's my general sandbox advice from an earlier sandbox thread. Now to specifics: I'd say most AD&D location-based adventures are mini sandboxes, and there some very sandbox-y modules even for 3rd edition, like The Red Hand of Doom or the Castle Ravenloft adventure book. Most modules and...

The views on d20 maths may be a matter of opinion but what irked me the most was that high level game became "roll Fort DC XX or die" because everyone always hit, and everyone always did massive damage. The rules changes just made the game bearable for our group after we left the typical d20...

If you're interested, here's our ended long-running Conan campaign wiki: Conan Acheronian Edition I also made a lot of house rules for it which tried to fix the issues we encountered while playing.

I see DMing as a two-part problem. Firstly you have to come up with a premise for a story/adventure, and secondly you have to be an improvisational storyteller and be able to describe things to your players in a compelling manner and react to what they are doing. This is my old advice for...

My suggestions in order: 1) Baldur's Gate (someone already mentioned Murder in Baldur's Gate which is a great overview of the city, and it's very easy to expand it to your own thing) 2) Neverwinter (there's a good 4E book you can use, and it's near Phandelver if I remember correctly) 3) Vornheim...

Personally I'm not a big fan of bookkeeping and rolling skill checks that don't have interesting stakes. I'd just use the PHB / DMG downtime rule where you get to roll to get rid of an injury after three days of continuous rest. Spells or other appropriate care might give you an advantage to...

Here's a fan-made index to Dungeon Dozen. Look under 'Encounters'.

I don't usually bother with session notes unless I have something special in mind (like a cool cursed magic item from Ravenloft). Before I run a campaign I figure out the main conflict in the campaign, the antagonists, their resources etc. I (among other people) wrote about this in another...