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I like 5e, it's certainly cleaner than 4e or 3.x. You could say older editions were even cleaner - move and make an attack - but the trade-off there was you generally needed a lot of discussion and/or house-rules and/or DM rulings to work out exactly what people could and could not do on their...

If you are pitching the original AP, then it really is best and easiest to use Lord of the Rings as an analogy. Everyone's read Lord of the Rings and/or seen the movies. The War of the Lance AP, and War of the Rings, have: Epic Quest. Good vs Evil. Disparate group of slightly raw recruits...

Well, it was initially like Lord of the Rings, translated into a D&D game. Except it suffered from the obvious problems of Novel vs Game. As to the cool stuff that set it (the setting) apart: * a halfling race (Kender) that wasn't just a Hobbit * a monster race (Minotaur) that wasn't just a...

I'm told, by someone who read the book more closely than me, that the 3e book did make a number of changes, like Elves were no longer leaving like in Tolkien, and Dwarves started breeding properly so were no longer dying out. It advanced the timeline, only by a year or two, from 2e. The "time...

By all means, don't necessarily pander to the 'level appropriate' straight-jacket. But... For me, the biggest problem with old-school random monster tables is just that - they are a collection of monsters, waiting around for PC's to fight. In fact, too many of us begin these encounters by...

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The first two adventures for tales of yawning portal, were the original 3.0 adventures. In 3.0 there was a set of "iconic" characters, that featured in the art work etc. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_iconic_characters If you want to re-create a kind of...

Note: Greyhawk was actually a bit of "shared world" ala Forgotten Realms, and lots of other people's ideas got woven into what was actually published. For example, Blackmoor was very loosely based on Dave Arneson's home campaign; the Lordship of the Isles was Len Lakofka's invention; there are...

I ran Greyhawk with the original box-set, as well as Gazeteer for my main references, with a bit of extra material from here and there. Personally I didn't like much of the "Greyhawk Wars" stuff, but from memory the Gazeteer is actually about 80% original box-set, and 20% Greyhawk Wars etc...

I bought the original Grey Box, and never liked it much even in its original form (which didn't last long before 2e came out and the 'troubles' began). For my tastes, Ed Greenwood has some interesting ideas, but no real ability to create a coherent whole from them. His game world is an...

In my experience, most players love character continuity; if you give them the chance to stop and do something different, hardly any will want to take it. So as a DM, it's up to me to try and help make that fun. For example: 1. make sure your session recap doesn't just go over what happened...

I use that optional rule in the DMG (no hp re-gained by rest; you have to spend hit dice, and as usual you only get half back with a long rest), partly because it's how I got my name in the DMG credits, even if I think they modified my suggestions a bit ;) Anyway, having no 'auto-reset' button...

Tricky situation there... as you know, Baba Lasagna with helpers is definite TPK potential, I didn't realise just how tough her Hut was until I was wasting you with it. From my reading, Strahd and Baba-L don't hang out together, but what's done is done; I guess Strahd has stepped in and...

Well, I once ran a cool adventure where the PC's got ambushed by skeletons that were hanging out 'under water' in a lake of blood, just as the PC's were trying to make their way to the evil priest on the far side of the lake/pool. I guess the moral of that story is... make use of the fact they...

p.s. there was a heap of great advice written 'back in the day', about running the Age of Worms, some was even authored by me. Most of it is still useful for a 5e conversion, and it's all still on the Paizo site. For example, here's a thread about tHoHR...

I ran AoW twice, once in 3.5, once in 5e. I assume the adventure you are referring to is "The Hall of Harsh Reflections"? For me, the two groups had quite different experiences. The first time around, I maybe didn't give it enough thought before hand; I don't think I did an early switch...

Ghosts is a massive, sprawling set of adventures designed for PC's level 1-10, but given it was pre-release rules if you ran it using published 5e rules that might push it up a tad. Personally I've only skimmed its near 300 pages, and nothing got me excited. Scourge I like, although I've only...

Your problem statement is lacking. Are you trying to say that "attrition" isn't working as you'd like? What do you want get get from "attrition"? Something about providing a different type of challenge for high-level PC's? Like, make it more like low-level PC's struggle to survive? Are you...

I ran Goldenfields last night - from where the halfling alerts the town, to when the last few Giants and Ogres ran away and gave up trying to get in and steal all the food. We had 4 players, and over the course of the session I handed out all 6 NPC's, but no-one ever ran more than one at a...

You are correct, but missing the point I intended to make. I stand by my analogy simply because you can't really fire your DM and employ a new one; typically the DM has arranged the campaign, so at best the players can decide to leave the campaign, and find a new DM (you could even keep the...