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Great points, all! I agree that I framed this quite a bit too far on the side of "5E heroes on a quest" and need to lean more into what makes Shadowdark strong. I think the simple change of reframing the hook and making the spreading curse more of a background element that might come out later...

TL;DR: I hope this isn't a threadjack -- or if it is, it's a fruitful one that adds to the conversation, as well -- but I was wondering what would you folks put on your wish list of things to update, revise, or add to B3 in order to strengthen its themes and story? Background: I'm planning to...

I love monster books because of the inspiration mainly, then the lore, and lastly the stats. I used to think (for an embarrassingly long time) that I liked them for the stats more, but only all-too-recently have I discovered that I don't like my games as mechanically complex as I thought I did...

I'd start with Shadowdark or Knave, and build from there. Before SD dropped, I was using Knave as the basis of some hacks and it was incredibly powerful and streamlined, making it really easy to do so. The compatibility with B/X-era D&D means you open up so much content for direct use that it's...

This is a very important point. I've used ChatGPT for some game prep and it cannot consistently follow the rules of games it has access to, even with further definition from me over many prompts and exercises. By trying to pull from so many different sources -- many of which are pretty good...

Too bad even the critical darling Planescape: Torment didn't nearly the business of the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games. I don't think WOTC has much interest in non-Realms stuff in general, but even less so when their entire business has been in a (comparative) slump. They seem to be...

There will always be creators happy to pick up this sort of torch. Development times being what they are for a game as expansive as any sequel would necessarily have to be, even if it's only half of what Larian Studios did, means it will be a very long time before we see or hear anything, though.

What "spaces" do you mean? Here on ENWorld maybe it's still a fairly older-skewing "I love brand name D&D" crowd, on the average? While I think a lot of people are big into the OSR/NSR/etc., I still think nostalgia wins out in polls and requests like these more often than not. In part, it's...

To add: Look at Beyond the Borderlands and Planar Compass zines as really good examples of pushing forward while looking back. Beyond is effectively a restatement of Keep on the Borderlands, but in a very video-gamey, highly stylized way that I think is both immediately accessible and also...

Totally agree, but I think about 98% of my classmates fell into that category, and it kinda ruined my experience. But the other piece of that was my own inability to speak up about my experience at the time, and the fact that I'm an old geezer now and was entering publishing during a period of...

I don't know how relevant this is, but... I suspect in as early as 5-10 years the numbers of folks recommending B1 and B2 and stuff from that era is going to fall off of a cliff. Mostly for bad reasons, but also for good reasons: I think releases like Tomb of the Serpent Kings (and a lot of...

Aside from the condescension at the start of that response, I agree with your general point, but would like to point out that commissioning artists can be expensive as heck, can be fraught with project coordination-type issues, and could lead to subpar results. I've commissioned art both for...

Did you run it as a gauntlet, or were the characters level 1+? And roughly how many sessions did it take? I'm looking for something that I can mold into a one-shot, even if that means having a couple ideas for definitive "end-points" that don't necessarily require completing all/most of the...

You are saying we have to understand AI and how it works, but without using it. Do I have that right?

Good question. Looks like the Open Gaming Network pulled down the S&W SRD, possibly because of the new license the game operates under? Most of their other stuff is still online, but notably there lists of SRDs on a few pages are showing an error: [srd_sitelist outerelements="off"]

First of all, I'm happy to share more info about our experience; we're on a discussion forum, after all. So if you have specific questions that would help you see whether this had any value or not rather than dismissing our experience out of hand, shoot. I still have the history of prompts...

Just as a test, in the heat of a moment during a game session I asked Bard (at the time) to write me a short dream sequence (3-5 paragraphs) for a player to experience a very positive "blessing" from their deity, and juxtaposed that AI-written scene with a sequence I had developed a while back...

There's a lot here that I agree with, especially specific to WOTC. If they go into "AI as DM" to any degree, they really need to take a hard look at what DMing means, and it's very clear to me that they have not done so throughout 5E's lifecycle, though I'll reserve final judgment until I see...

Responding in reverse order: Yeah, I think that's super common because the TTRPG industry is still kinda-sorta-not-really-an-industry in how it functions, so it's filled with far more creatives than any other position. I went to school to get into publishing for the technical side, and so I was...

Or there is a group of 5 GMs just in search of the right game for each of them to run. Or, less positive-for-the-TTRPG-side, 5 players looking for the right app-driven co-op board game. I'm not well-versed in that space, but I played several sessions of Journeys in Middle-Earth and once we got...