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I didn't really get that vibe from the survey. They seemed very much on the whole "are you bringing in new players?" That might be due to the branches I went down. Except they seem to have little interest in generating those products, or haven't so far.

There's no way to survey without selection effects period, but strong skew due to selection bias has the potential to really mislead. On the other hand, blowing off selection does lead to a very inexpensive survey.

I find it hard to know what value uncontrolled self-selection would have, although it's fairly challenging to identify exactly what the population of D&D players is, given how rapidly it's been changing. Still, color me professionally skeptical of the value of a survey that doesn't have a clear...

I got 98%. Those percent completion indicators are dubious and I wouldn't take them too seriously (or indeed the whole survey).

Indeed, their web page is just buy-buy-buy and provides almost no reason to visit given how disorganized it is.

It still has the problem of being heavily self-selected, as are internet surveys without some randomization.

There's also Monarchies of Mau, which is Pugmire but cats. I think it'd be a great for the kids game. I mean, just look at this picture:

Interesting to know, and here I thought this was new territory, even though it was a logical extension of the tensions that existed!

It's a really delicate balancing act. A player with very plain mac-and-cheese tastes will often be overly excited by what satisfies a more adventurous player who doesn't mind more plot twists and the like. But you're 100% right, almost no player will be on board for a game that fundamentally...

Certainly, though I don't know that that's exactly the kind of tension that's needed all the time, particularly because it can push "save the world" storylines. A "cold peace" can be good, and leaves lots of room for motion without it moving into grimdark territory. I guess it was the tenor of...

I'm glad to hear that. I felt what Sargent had done was a pretty logical extension of what had been brewing in Greyhawk from the various Dragon columns I'd read before (haphazardly, I was a kid with only intermittent access to Dragon), although wow did it become a grimdark world with the...

Unquestionably not original, although none of the Greyhawk material post-Gygax was as far as I know. Certainly not the 2E material. That said, much of it, especially what was written by the late Carl Sargent, was quite good, though, as was a lot of the 2E material overall. Pity the business...

Yes, Greyhawk Ruins. Unlike WG7: Castle Greyhawk published in 1988, it was not intentionally comedic, although given that in the campaign I mentioned Keraptis was one of the main villains(?) and this was, after all, Zagyg's house, our game had a decidedly darkly humorous aspect.

Cool! I played in Castle Greyhawk which was released for 2E and some in the joke version that was at the tail end of 1E. Of course we all knew these were just someone else's take on it. The 2E one we managed to integrate into a long-running Greyhawk campaign. Our PCs had mostly serious...

It'd be a cool blog post, certainly! I can think of others, those were just the top of my head, and I'm sure many folks have similar ones. Over the years I've played with quite a number of people, but my main group---we call the Den of Iniquity after a particularly nasty college apartment some...

Oh yeah, my own longtime group has our treasured chestnuts, too. "I hear he's pitching for the Githyankis now." ---throwing specialist, upon killing some pesky Githyanki with throwing darts. "You put me in a box!" ---uttered by a player who was absent for several sessions and the DM needed a...

Compulsions need to be used very sparingly in my experience, just like capture scenarios or other similar things that involve violations of player autonomy. I've heard DMs say "there was a lot there but you guys just didn't explore it". However, that relies on the shared understanding that...

This is a very good example where it can be necessary for the GM to provide some nudges. Others are when common game notions are altered. For instance, my home campaign world is pretty substantially shifted from conventional D&D in a number of ways. As an example, there are dark-skinned elves...

100%. That's one of the first arguments of scoundrel players.