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Bounded accuracy and advantage/disadvantage are without a doubt the things that keep me playing 5E. I have a whole laundry list of problems with 5E, and there are several components that I think 4E did much, much better, but the flat math and lack of modifiers makes it a great beer-and-pretzels...

Trash combats. IE, the kind of fights that 5E's "adventuring day" design pushes you towards* (1d6+2 goblins in the first room, a wight in the second room, all before the big goblin boss in the third room). I would rather have one big fight that can be loud and crazy, with the volume cranked to...

One of the benefits of the 5E version is that it makes seven attacks: six with its longswords and one with its tail. So as the DM, I can quickly see, 'okay, +9 to hit, 13 damage'. I just repeat that six times. Boring, but easy to remember. With the ToV version, it has two dagger attacks (9...

Depends on the riddle, but I typically don't like them. I've been involved in too many games where the riddle was obviously pulled from a Google Search, "best riddle for D&D". I think I've heard the same riddle five times now. I think the riddle has to fit into the world. I'm not interested if...

I find myself using ChatGPT less and less for brainstorming, but I'm using it more-and-more for time-consuming tasks. For example, I run my games using the Obsidian note-taking app; I like to have all my spells, statblocks, etc in Obsidian so I can utilize the multiple-frame function or hover...

I'd actually say it has a 10-year research and development phase, not 2. I'm really glad it has new art, and I'm glad that WOTC is able to employ folks. That doesn't change the fact that for my wallet I'm not interested in a half-measure edition. I would gladly pay the $150+ that WOTC...

As of right now, no. I'm just not interested in paying WOTC for what seemingly seems to be errata. The biggest hooks to me are going to be spellcasting changes (no more spells that makes a DM's life difficult), an updated Monster Manual (ideally with monster design that hearkens back to 4E), and...

As a GM, I tell my players that 95% of all official content is good to go (as in, you don't need to ask me). In session zero, I go over my banned/adjusted content. I also mention that if there is something they want from a third party, to talk to me about it, and we'll go over it on a...

I would argue 5E doesn't help with this, it just reframes the argument. For the record, I don't really care what gets summoned. I care that if conjure animals is cast at 7th level, I have to deal with 24 (twenty-four) new creatures on the field. I don't care if it's a snake, camel, rat - it's...

from a design perspective, I don't like "I win" buttons - either in encounters or in social/environment perspectives. Situations/encounters that can be solved with a single spell slot is, to me, unfun. (could I just "create better encounters"? sure - but why make it hard on the DM?) I don't like...

I realize this is a hot take, but I think what makes a good "Exploration" mechanic isn't tracking resources, or watching a little icon move across a map, or random encounters. Obviously, some groups really like that, but I don't think it's the majority. For me, a good exploration sequence is a...

In the year of our Lord 2024, I've given up on wishing for more 4E-style mechanics to come back, but this is the hill I'll die on. 4E monsters were so fun to run and to design. I'd be at work, creating monsters in my Field Notes that fit their roles, with interesting and engaging combat...

I use chatgpt to format statblocks into Obsidian, where I use a dice-roller add-on. Which means, everytime I pop open the monster statblock for "bandits", Obsidian randomly rolls its HP. My statblock looks like: Bandit HP: 9 (dice: 2d8) [Obsidian will randomly roll the dice in the parenthesis...

Tertiary (GM-facing stuff) and it's not even close. We have enough races to last us a lifetime. There's over 500 spells. There's plenty of questionably-balanced classes and subclasses. What we don't have is an engaging way to run a mass battle. Or a way to run an encounter that doesn't involve...

I like buying physical books of the games I own and really like to run, mainly for the sake of placing the physical book on the table when we play a session. That book is almost never picked up. Instead, I - and the rest of the players - almost exclusively use the digital PDFs (both during the...

I have two in-person groups; one meets on Mondays, the other on Fridays. The group on Monday officially starts at 6:30, but we realistically don't start playing until around 7:15. We usually end around 9:45, or 10:00 at the latest. So all told, about 2.5 hours. The group on Friday officially...

I'd be very curious to see if there's a marked difference between VTT tables and in-person tables.

I may be an odd duckling in that I'm generally not interested in super specific, this-TTRPG-is-for-this-specific-setting, so if I discover a TTRPG is intrinsically tied to a setting - I'm out. I generally seek out setting-agnostic or universal systems (or at least, systems that can easily be...

Yes? Yeah, the thing right now might be good, but what if the next thing is great? I’ve always thought WOTC’s latest spiel of, “5E is the last edition” to be mostly nonsense because imagine being the D&D Lead in 2040 and being told, “yeah, so you actually aren’t allowed to change anything...

This year I played: D&D 5E (home-brew campaign) Mothership 1E (played Dead Planet) Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (home-brew Revolutionary War campaign) Heart: the City Beneath (home-brew campaign) Next year, it's looking like more 5E, while running Dead Planet for a different group...