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There was someone in the Indy Racing League who just died a few years ago, I think, and there was also someone this year who was trying to climb Devil's Tower in Wyoming and instead fell to his death. The latter admittedly wasn't (probably) a competitive sport thing; my point is that people die...

In principle, I allow players to take a lingering injury for a character instead of having them permadie. In practice, it hasn't mattered: The player whose character permadied left the table.

Just because he's quotable (he is) doesn't mean he should be quoted (he shouldn't) or that he's right (he's not).

My own approach is that the fights the PCs stumble into/over very probably won't kill them (I won't design them to be deadly, but stuff can happen) but the fights the PCs go looking for just might. Obviously other approaches exist, and work at the respective tables.

Some mix between these two is pretty much how I run the ability, period: You can make non-hostile contact, you can send messages. I also used the Rogue with the Criminal background in my third campaign as a conduit of Underworld information to the party: This is who these guys are, this is their...

I'm not a big fan, mostly for reasons having to do with my own experiences, but it is a trope. If I were to run something in that direction, I, like you, wouldn't want to negate people's background/backstory choices right out of the gate.

I figure the game world follows real-world physics as much as it has to so the players can make sense of it and make decisions based on it. While my setting's primary game-world is slowly awakening to sentience, it exists in a solar system a lot like our own (because I made it so). I personally...

I don't think it's implausible, or breaks the game or anything. I don't know that it's a given, either (and I don't understand you to be saying it is). I do have good reliable mail service in my setting, especially in the big cities.

I specifically wrote my setting for D&D 5e, because that was the ruleset I wanted to play and run. When I ran a game of Cypher, I used a (homebrewed) "Real World + Weird" setting, because that seemed to be where the game wanted to be. If I ever run Chaosium's Rvers of London TRPG, it won't be in...

Yeah, I think it's possible to run a twist with player buy-in, it just takes more work to get there. In principle, fish-out-of-water stuff can be fine, I've just always found it, as player and DM, to be deeply frustrating (and not found it to do anything particularly extra for party cohesion)...

Yeah, if you're going to do that sort of thing, you need to get some player buy-in. Less than a twist-centric campaign, I think, but some; and making sure no one picked a background that'd just get nuked seems like a way to make that easier. EDIT: But see my comment upthread containing my...

Different priorities, of course. I generally am happy to write a setting that works with the expectations of the game (ruleset) I want to run.

'Tis enough, 'twill serve.

The three campaigns I've run for 5e, in my homebrewed setting ... (First campaign, 1-20) The PCs started in a city that was promptly menaced by various undead. The party took eight or so sessions to resolve that, then started looking at things they were interested in outside that city--but they...

No worries. I have access to ways to model this area, too, I just figured it was easier to write the setting to fit 5e's rules than to rewrite the rules.

As a datum: I started two D&D 5e tables, each in a different FLGS/playspace. I specifically set out to recruit at least some players I didn't know, and I ended up with two tables of six players, half of which were new to me (the other half were old gaming friends, same three in both tables). At...

I don't think we disagree about game-level stuff. I'd be inclined to say that in the majority of fiction, regardless of genre or medium, something is being exaggerated in some way.

I honestly don't think I've pre-defined even thirty (let alone sixty) NPCs in even that much detail, across the three campaigns I've started. I'm planning ahead if I have a name. Obviously, there are different ways to make the setting engaging.

Apparently I'm refusing to accept there are limits on the PC ability, though.

Last paragraph. Languages don't work in most D&D settings the way they do in the real world.