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In my Roll20 classic D&D campaign I do start PCs with max HP. This also ensures different classes start with appropriate relative HPs, rather than the Fighter rolling a 1 and the MU rolling a 4. There is very little adventure material truly written for level 1s. Most "Level 1-3" stuff will...

I'm not equating them, just pressuring you to acknowledge that you do, in fact, evaluate the validity of someone's offense when they take offense to D&D. Oh I am aware. I'm predicting that 6e will have a similar decline in story/adventure quality as 2e, for similar reasons. The curse of the...

@Hussar How about Jack Chick-style Christians offended by demons & devils in D&D? In your view are we obligated to change the game to appease them as well? If not, why not? Their offense is surely real and intensely felt.

Perhaps the "two underlying truths" are nothing less than the two forces balanced in all creative works: the Dionysian vs. the Apollonian. Creativity vs. Rationality. Yes vs. No. Live-and-let-live hippie-style tolerance vs. the paradoxically fascistic persecution of the intolerant. Heritage vs...

Maybe the purpose is to promote the official D&D adventures, since the monsters aren't ready-to-use anymore.

I like PvP/intra-party conflict, I just wish the logistics were easier. Last session (on Roll20) the party hired retainers, and one PC secretly recruited and gave orders to a Chaotic Evil retainer behind the Paladin's back. It was quite challenging to handle multiple threads at once. I suspect...

Yeah! Arden Vul has amazing content but desperately needs another editing pass to improve at-the-table usability. The shorthand approach discussed here would NOT work, though. Genuinely complex situations require full sentences to describe clearly. I would argue that traditional, ToEE-style...

The depiction of orcs doesn't match the most common and pernicious colonialist depictions of blacks. Orcs are far too dangerous to D&D humans for them to enjoy minstrel shows featuring the trope of the lazy, happy-go-lucky orc. Orcs in D&D Land are obviously not a conquered and colonized...

This is so bad I actually kind of like it.

The PCs come to the defense of towns where the militia has been defunded.

That makes sense to me--I do try to be neutral in framing challenges with respect to the PCs created, although I don't think that's totally necessary for OSR play, since char gen as an arena for skilled play is not very important. I would raise an eyebrow if an OSR DM began to include more...

wrong thread

I'm asking whether white people historically considered dark-skinned people Evil, because that's more relevant to the issue of whether the depiction of Orcs & Drow in D&D today hearkens back to older racist beliefs. I'm aware that historically European peoples considered Others less intelligent...

Forgive my ignorance of the history of racist attitudes, but is it actually true that white people for hundreds of years believed that dark-skinned people were evil? That seems unlikely to me.

4-5 hours Saturday afternoon D&D, 3 hours Tuesday night Call of Cthulhu.

I think the extent to which B/X refereeing is passive is perhaps being exaggerated here. When running my B/X game I do generally wait for the PCs to come to the challenge (i.e. it's a sandbox), but in resolving them I'm often guided by a sense of what would make it most satisfying for the...

I like intelligent monsters that are nevertheless irredeemably evil precisely because they don't exist IRL, and are therefore weird. I'm quite confident their appeal to me has nothing to do with old-timey racial slurs and stereotypes. I guess I could do without evil "races", as long as we're...

One of my players has graciously been writing a campaign journal for our Roll20 campaign. I've obtained permission to share entries here. The system is my own set of house-rules for B/X D&D. I use additional spells and magic items from the AD&D 1e DMG.

Yeah, I'm glad I decided not to use AD&D for my Roll20 campaign. The learning curve of the VTT is enough on its own, without having to teach newbies 1e initiative :). I think OSE will work much better for you. I'm running my own version of Basic D&D houseruled to minimize handling time and it's...

Reminds me of something I've been wondering about. Is it possible to infer from a transcript of play (such as the session recaps posted here) whether the adventure felt sandboxy or railroady to the players, or do you have to be a participant in the game to perceive that? I suspect linear...