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Except 5E does away with the idea that magic items are a simple commodity that can be easily bought and sold. If you don't want your players to have a given item ... don't make it available. There is certainly no reason players should be comparison shopping between a half dozen flying items...

I have used both though I have mostly gamed using minis/tokens/digital maps going back to 1E. Like KarinsDad I find that TotM is often the harder to pull off for any combat more complex than a big melee scrum. I am not a fan of uber tactical play (yes, I am looking at you 4E), but minis on a...

Honestly, it is the PLAYERS that should be coming up with an escape plan. If it is a feasible (or at least fun) plan then give it a chance of success. As a DM you don't want to decide in advance what the *right* escape plan is, because then you will be tempted to railroad them into that plan...

Its not a bad idea. I think the beginner experience could be improved with a streamlined rule set designed for more boardgame like play. Even the beginner box has tons of rules that could be ignored for simplicity sake without really impacting the core gameplay. I think the real issue would...

Yeah, I don't see any problems with this approach. If you are trying to eliminate the "sandboxyness" you might also want to tweak the dungeon so that the levels have a liner progression like a traditional dungeon - i.e. players must go through level 1 (the air temple) to get to level 2 (the...

The thing is - a SETTING IS NOT MECHANICS. A setting isn't prestige classes. A setting isn't statblocks. A setting is places and people and stories and conflicts. None of that has changed in 5E. There are dozens and dozens of setting books for D&D available as cheap PDFs (or on EBAY if...

So an invisible assassin can ambush a paralyzed target and never benefit from more than two dice - but a blind, restrained, poisoned character firing at long range can take the best of three dice using Lucky? I guess it really is better to be lucky than good.....

I would recommend either: 1) Fey Sisters' Fate by Goodman Games ($7 for PDF); or 2) Bandits' Nest by Dan Coleman Productions (pay what you want PDF). Both are excellent 1st level one shots available from RPGNow.com. Fey Sisters' Fate is a bit long for one session, but has some "filler"...

Wow, that is by far the most articulate, thoughtful response I have seen a company make to allegations of racial insensitivity. It is particularly surprising coming from a small company, given that so many large companies with legions of PR staff have bungled it so badly. Unfortunately, in...

I think you could do dragonmarks at first level one of two ways: 1) As a background but you must ALSO spend your 4th level feat on the dragonmark. In other words the background benefit is that you get the feat earlier than you otherwise would. The character only has the benefit of the least...

Maybe instead of restricting casters with rules changes you set your game in a world where spellcasting is illegal and casters will be hunted down by the church or state as witches if they openly use magic? This would make players think twice about playing a caster and also force casters to...

I tend to buy adventures far more than anything else, so would love to see more of those. Either new 5E material or conversions of some of your older ones (Lost City of Barakus was one of my faves). I think a product like Paizo's NPC Codex would be a very useful resource. It would be great to...

You might want to check out the 1st edition module L1 Secret of Bone Hill. It is available as a PDF at RPGNow.com and dndclassics.

I understand where you are coming from and I agree with your concerns. However, the point that I think you may be missing is that (with a couple of exceptions) the APs are a bunch of short adventures that are tied together with a common storyline. It is not that hard to strip out the...

Yeah I think it should be fine. The Adventuring Day XP table (I don't have the DMG handy, but it is pg. 57 of the basic rules download) should still work to budget for the number of encounters you plan to run. The baseline assumption is around 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day, but if...

As others have said, playing with fun people and a great DM trumps pretty much any other factors. But if we are talking IDEAL campaign then I would say: Setting: Greyhawk is my hands down favorite. Eberron is pretty cool if I am looking for something different than vanilla fantasy...

IMO Runelords is the classic AP - if your group has not played it yet you can't go wrong. Plus there is a partial 5E conversion for Runelords (at least the first couple of books) online. I don't have a link but a Google search should turn it up. In case you weren't aware, there are reviews...

I would recommend B10 Night's Dark Terror (available from DnD Classics/RPGNow). It is a really cool adventure for Basic D&D that was released well past the heyday of Basic, so not many people have played it. I'd also second Gates of Firestorm Peak - one of the best 2E adventures published.

Honestly, if those things are deal breakers for you then I don't know what to tell you except good luck in your future gaming. I hope you enjoy Pathfinder, because that is pretty much the only game system I can think of that meets your criteria. I agree that digital tools would be nice...

First, I would do a very rough, high level map of the city. Don't draw the streets, just the shape of the city divided into a few districts - e.g. beggar's quarter, artisan's district, market square, temple row, etc. Mark down important locations in the city and any locations relevant to the...