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Beautiful work, thanks for posting them!

My group is running the first part of the Petals & Thorns campaign now, and it is easily the best executed "sandbox" style adventure I have played. Good adventures give PCs choices, but this one goes the extra step in making sure that those choices actually have consequences that impact the...

It strikes me that there is a lot of daylight between "end fights before they get tedious" and "end fights after 3 rounds." Plenty of fights are fun and interesting 10+ rounds in; conversely, if there is no real challenge even running 3 rounds of combat may be 3 rounds too many. Rather than an...

I haven't played yet, but from from my initial read through the changes mostly look like improvements. For example, the lore of the previous editions made clear that social standing is important in the Old World, but from a rules perspective treated a rat catcher the same a noble. Previously...

I would add that the game has a set of free basic rules (comparable to the 5E basic rules) for those that want a better idea of the game without having to buy anything.

Eh, the 5E rulebooks are just titled "Player's Handbook," "Monster Manual" and "Dungeon Master's Guide" - same as they have been for the previous 4.5 editions. People seem to be figuring it out OK.

Not really. Bear in mind that the PCs don't need to outrun the owlbear, they just need to outrun the henchman lugging 90 pounds of cp in his backpack...

I guess "Xanthar's Guide to Stuff You Could Have Just Googled" didn't test well with the focus groups.

Playing RPGs IS and improv class.

It's the bacon of RPGs.

Welcome! My advice would be not to worry too much and just dive in. DMing is like sex - you are probably going to be pretty bad at it at it your first few tries, but everyone will still have fun. In terms of campaigns, Princes of the Apocalypse is a good one that is also fairly beginner...

PotA is very good, although it is primarily dungeon crawling so it can be a bit of a slog if your group is not into that. The early sections are non-linear, but if that is not to your liking it is easy enough to "nudge" the party in the direction you want by dropping the appropriate breadcrumbs...

You can cut and paste stat blocks (plus spells, etc.) into a document from one of the online versions of the 5E System Reference Docs (www.Open5E.com and www.5thSRD.org both work well). It is not perfect - you will need to tweak the formatting, and the SRD doesn't have everything, but it is...

I disagree. I'd say the 4E designers threw the baby out with the bathwater - and that was one of the problems. The 5E team didn't design the best fantasy RPG they could - they designed the best version of D&D that they could. You could say that they kept Gary and Dave's baby (ok taking the...

Sure, I am all in favor of changing ANY rules to suit your particular campaign goals. My point is that Mearls articulates a narrow goal and then proposes a wholesale rewrite of the xp rules when a simple tweak would achieve that goal just as well. To use an analogy: Mearls wants to rebuild a...

It seems like you could accomplish the same thing more easily just adding xp awards to the existing system: Explore a location/influence an NPC below your Tier - Award XP for defeating an Easy combat encounter Explore a location/influence an NPC at your Tier - Award XP for defeating an Medium...

Yeah, I think it makes for good gaming if characters to occasionally face threats they can't handle, but it is tricky. Often players are just relying on some sort of metagame thinking to know they are outclassed, which is not ideal (either knowing a monster's CR is above their current...

As a DM I look at alignment in 5E similarly to how I look at bonds/flaws/ideals - something to help a player define his character and give them some guidance on how to role play, but not something I should micromanage. If a character was behaving in a way that was clearly inconsistent with the...

My point is to show that you can get the benefits Mearls touts with a couple of simple tweaks to the existing rules, rather than completely rebuilding the system. In this context I don't see a strong case for dropping the Dex bonus so I am sticking with the existing PHB rule rather than...

My point is to show that you can get the benefits Mearls touts with a couple of simple tweaks to the existing rules, rather than completely rebuilding the system. In this context I don't see a strong case for dropping the Dex bonus so I am sticking with the existing PHB rule rather than...