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But isn't the definition of PCs on an adventure, a long sequence of Things Going Horribly Wrong One After Another???

Only in the "you are what you eat" sense.

I agree. This is an easy trap for the DM to fall into. If you place too many hurdles in the way of PCs achieving their own goals, then you end up effectively training your players to not bother having PC goals. This doesn't mean that everything the PCs want to do should be trivial and...

Two main strategies, I think: One is to encourage the players to create PCs who have their own goals (which might develop and change over time as the PCs achieve things). And then, as DM, let the PCs act on those goals and achieve things. If you do this, then there's no problem with the PCs...

More or less. Although not literally as I have much longer hair now (as a 40 year old) than when I was first playing D&D (as a 10 year old)! :)

I think that in the past, with my playgroups, we had delusions that we could write better rules, and also an idea that playing by the rules was not creative. Today, we seem to more inclined to accept that the official rules are good enough (perhaps, because the official rules are better?)...

I would do the following (long to write, but relatively simple to play): a) Make it a Feat to have an animal companion like this. b) The Feat wouldn't be tied to a specific animal, but acquiring the animal would need to explained. This might be something as complicated as requiring an...

From my experience of playing 5e this isn't really a big deal. The main reason is that players play their PC not some other PC. If a player has a PC with a low Dex, but a high Cha, then as far as possible, she will try to arrange things so that she is rolling a Cha Ability Check, rather than a...

Won't Gargantuan creatures be almost killed by tripping over?

My advice is not to worry about this. If the players realise they are playing something similar to a movie that they have seen, then they will either try to do what happened in the movie or deliberately do something different. Afterall, in many movie plots of this nature most of the "PCs" die...

As others have commented this, including the extra features, doesn't seem balanced. But, if your goal is to not have any PC halflings, then it is probably mission accomplished. Otherwise, I would go for -1 STR, -1 CON, +2 DEX and drop the additional features. The features are mostly melee combat...

In other words by the players not attempting to play D&D at all? So, in summary, mechanically sub-optimal characters are only a problem if the DM is ignoring the capability of the PCs when designing / running encounters, and the players are also ignoring the capabilities of the PCs when they...

Of course not, but it doesn't really matter, that's the illusion. In play, the door could be DC 20 or 15. The fighter trying to break it down could be STR 8 or STR 18. However, when the fighter tries to break the door down one or two things will happen. In play, the player of the fighter only...

Sometimes the story is one of failing at a particular thing. But it is relatively rare that this is the end of story (i.e. a TPK). Even if the DM is a bitch. The players are playing the PCs they have, not the PCs they did not create. So, the players make plans and attempt things within the...

Even if that is the case (and the DM playing the game with complete disregard to the PCs does involve disregarding a lot of what the DMG says is a good idea), the players don't play the game with total disregard to the particular PCs. If the fighter, for example, is rubbish at the fighty bits...

It's not that the obstacles are illusionary, but the idea that there are specific obstacles that must be overcome in a specific way is the illusion. The obstacles depend on the PCs. If the players have different characters you just have different obstacles, not that the players fail somehow...

Yes, but it is only an illusion that there are objective obstacles to overcome in a game of D&D. The fiction story being told is always about the PCs that the players are actually playing overcoming / bypassing / being flummoxed by / being injured by or killed by obstacles. The fact that if...

It's always been abundantly clear that "pretend to be another person to some extent" is the intent of the game. This is illustrated by the simple idea that right from original D&D onwards the character sheet has a space for the player name and a separate space for the character name.

By "both types" I assume that you mean union and league?

I don't think that Int is a dump stat or that it is a commonly held belief that it is. Nonetheless, if I was to try to make it more attractive I would go for the following. Outwit ===== Each PC has a number of Outwit points equal to their INT modifier. A PC with a zero or negative INT...