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Me too. I've seen DM's who were so eager to please players that they demolished any sense of actual challenge in the game. DM's are there to make the game as hard as it needs to be but not harder...or easier.

There's no contradiction. Yes, characters are more important than stats. 15th level wizard isn't a stat though, it encompasses a lot territory within which to roleplay. Treating it like a hat which the character can remove at will is treating it like a stat. Like I said, I might allow...

A character can take a dodge action to impose disadvantage on an attacker. As a parallel, I'd definitely allow a character to use their action to interpose themselves between an enemy and an ally. I'd give the same end result of disadvantage to the attacker if it persists in attacking the...

I don't consider this important at all. I encourage players to play characters, not balls of stats. Only being interested in mathematically optimal characters is to miss a lot of cool opportunities for roleplaying. If you consider wizards to be incredibly rare and 15th level ones even more so...

As a DM I don't forbid multiclassing, but I discourage it. As a player, I never do it. I am not a fan of multiclassing in D&D. Going all the way back to 1st edition, dual and multiclassing has always been "half-baked", for lack of a better term. It also tend to be too meta-gamey for my taste...

Not really. In Spelljammer, Phlogiston is a place as well as a multi-colored flammable substance. It can be considered a dimension unto itself, separating solar systems and disconnected from other planes of existence. As a substance it can't exist outside of this 'dimension' at all. On the...

You could be any alignment. Lawful alignments have absolutely nothing to do with "laws".

I meant the implementation in AD&D of crystal spheres and phlogiston are inherently magical...they bear practically no resemblance to any ancient pseudo-scientific theories from Earth, despite using some of the same words. Saying Spelljammer is pseudo-scientific is like saying astrology is...

The crystal spheres and phlogiston aren't pseudo-scientific at all. In fact I can't really point to anything in Spelljammer that isn't inherently magical. The crystal spheres were an interesting concept to allow all the different AD&D world cosmologies to exist together by allowing for...

I always liked Spelljammer too. Some of it was cheesy but that stuff can be dropped if it doesn't fit your players' style. I see Spelljammer as a necessary component of any multiplanar campaign. I mean, otherwise you can travel to other dimensions...but not up? I would love to see crystal...

I did change it. I never feel bound to use anything as written. I was just commenting on what I felt would have made the actual written material better.

Valid reasons, but the players were expecting something a bit better than a small brazier that can make a weapon temporarily magical for a day or so. They (and I) would have been happy with perhaps a single common/uncommon permanent magic item for each character. The story could have been...

Was anyone else disappointed with the actual Lost Mine? The magic forge was underwhelming and pretty forgettable. The "Black Spider" was also a let down after the amount of mystery built up around his identity earlier. With regard to the dragon in Thundertree: The group of brand-new players I...

I think it is directed at people who find females attractive (and ships, treasure, and pirate hats). That is mostly, but not entirely, men. I am all for inclusiveness and equality, but trying to create a society where we deny our basic attractions is stupid and unhealthy.

The "weights" in D&D were originally intended to be a combination of both weight and bulk. In D&D a 10 pound bag of feathers would have a much higher "weight" than 10 pounds because it would be enormous and difficult to carry. In the early days this was made clear, but unless you've played D&D...

I am against fey marriage. Marriage should be between two humans. Wait...what are we talking about?

Agreed. I've always preferred "theater of the mind" too. Miniatures look cool, but in my experience they slow the game down and tend to adversely limit player's imaginations to what they see on the table. That said, I run a game for a large group of players that were newbies when we started...

Sure, anyone can play however they like. Although again, I would never play in such a game as the OP described as it is so far removed from the D&D I have always known as to be unrecognizable. Yes there are RPG's such as you describe, but they have never been D&D. I know my preferences are...

Sure, with roleplaying games there are almost no universal truths, but what I listed is intrinsic to every game I've ever been part of. I would not participate in any game which takes it upon the dice to tell a player what his character wants* to do. To reduce characters to a bunch of stats that...

I am only replying to the original poster's first post. ( I haven't bothered to read this giant thread. ) I have never seen anyone play D&D or any roleplaying game the way you describe. I would walk out of any such game as a player. All of those scenarios are wrong...wrong...wrong. You don't...