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The problem is a social one and is dealt with on that level. This is what I do: Me at Wizard Con 2025 in Kalamazoo, MI, Friday, April 25th: Welcome to Scourge of the Demon Wolf. Please look over the pre-generated character sheets and pick one. I’ll explain the rules I’ll be using in a minute...

To answer that, I think we have to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question: what is the point of the campaign? In other words, what are the creative goals that shape how we run and play the game, especially in player-driven or sandbox-style campaigns? I would like to hear what you...

Joe: Hey, Rob, why was there a dragon in that meadow? Rob: I felt like there ought to be one. Joe: But the nearest dragon lair is 200 miles away across the Westwall Mountains. Rob: I just it would be cool for a dragon to fly in to fight you guys. Joe: Rob you are being an a*h**. That was...

Creative choices like using realism or consistency as guiding principles are certainly worth discussing, but that’s not the central issue of why I replied to you. My point is that dissatisfaction doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If we don’t look at the full situation, we’re just reacting to the...

GM owns the decisions they make and their consequences, including what factors they used in that decision. But player dissatisfaction doesn’t automatically mean the decision was wrong or unjustified. That’s why the context of the decision needs to be evaluated to understand better why the player...

It’s not a procedural process defined by a system, but it is a structured approach that I can teach or coach. It’s built on consistent methods for managing the world in motion, extrapolating consequences, and adjudicating based on in-world logic. Explaining it fully takes more than a short forum...

Yes, but that is incomplete. By stopping where you left off with your point, you missed the larger picture. The creator should own the creative choices they make; however, it is also essential to understand why those particular choices are made. Otherwise, one's understanding of the resulting...

This isn’t about trust. It’s about matching how a campaign is managed to the kind of experience the group wants to have. Every structure discussed here exists to support specific creative goals. Trust is a social issue, and no amount of system design can resolve it. If someone in the group...

Sorry, but most of our discussion has centered on your analysis and critique of my approach to sandbox play. I haven’t yet seen a clear or cohesive articulation of your own philosophy, just isolated points, counterexamples, and hypotheticals. If you’ve laid it out elsewhere, great, but I haven't...

Indeed they do thanks for sharing them.

They are a modifier to a D&D 5e style skill check using 1d20 versus a target number. Higher is better.

Plenty of folks have contributed valuable ideas and innovations over the years. But framing it as "moving the art forward" implies a linear progression, which isn’t how creative endeavors work. RPGs aren’t technology where newer automatically means better. Older systems can still produce...

It’s perfectly reasonable to make different creative choices from what earlier designers or referees preferred. That’s how the hobby grows. But dismissing the creative practices of the past outright is a mistake. There’s a reason these approaches worked, and they laid the foundation for the...

I remembered a moment in late 90s or early 00 in the early days of the internet where my oldest friends discussed something about the AD&D 1e DMG we read on-line. We pulled out our copies, and none of us could remember reading that section before. We talked about how it was awesome, you can...

Mmm, technically no, but they are monster-level related. I don't use that aspect of AD&D 1e in my fantasy campaign. While I use dungeons, they are built with a history, and I design them accordingly. However, I have used the Wilderness tables, which work fine for the fantasy settings I use...

Starting on page 90 of the DMG the entire section goes on for ten paragraphs ending with this. Nor this is an isolated example. Gygax talks extensively about the various aspects of creating and managing the campaign's milieu. And setting consistency is a large part of this. From Page 21...