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That's called pacing and it's a good thing. There's an art to DMing and understanding things like pacing and managing the encounter challenge etc is key to becoming good at it. Though in the case of random encounters I would simply not bother roll, and just pick a suitable encounter that fit the...

There are plenty of ways to play the opponents of the PCs in combat in order to “balance“ the encounter, but I would say that fudging dice rolls is not one of them. Adjust HP (up or down), adjust tactics (I.e. don‘ll kill a PC when they’re down, or do), don’t have reinforcements show up, or do...

Not to derail this thread but it is disappointing to still see people talk about players rolling dice before being asked by the DM (bypassing the action adjudication step), and then expecting the DM to reward them. Rolling without the stakes being set is just asking for chaos. ”Ooh DM, I just...

Another of the challenges to successful social encounters is it requires a higher level of engagement from the players. With combat the players can easily describe what their PC does in each round: they attack with whatever they choose. Social interaction challenges, on the other hand, require...

The issue is: what is the dramatic question? For a combat it’s obvious (though sometimes boring). For a social interaction to be a challenge there has to be risk and and a reward. The reward needs to be worth whatever risk there is. And that’s the root of the problem, there’s usually no risk to...

True, IMO Star Trek: Picard is awful, but ST: Strange New Worlds is wonderful. So I think it really takes an effort to be true to the themes, something GoT abandoned in the last few seasons (we bailed around S4 after too much torture porn and not enough story progress.). I know nothing of Dark...

Well the Star Wars sequels definitely didn’t help me stick with the IP. I was all set with the FFG Star Wars books and then Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi came out and woof, I’ve not bothered with the last one and I’ve not attempted to start a game. Andor was great though, if a little slow to get going.

I’m saying that a clock is a key aspect of heists and providing some gameworld clock visible to the players would greatly assist the drama. The 5e rules give guidance on how long things take but no system to communicate the time passing to the players beyond the DM narrating constant updates...

Something sorely missing in the rulebooks and, one would imagine, something that would be critical to heists, is time keeping. Is there a system for tracking time presented?

Well perhaps I've been doing it wrong, but AoEs dictate a save, and most adventures list the save to use to defend against some environmental effect or whatever? Edit: And probably this is derailing this thread, so I'll leave it there!

I'm not a fan of saving throws as it seems they go against player agency. Sure, there's supposed to be some urgency, but I don't see why we can't still describe what's happening and ask them what they do... "The floor starts to collapse beneath your feet, what do you do?" "My character tries to...

Sure, but you were on the receiving end right? So who knows what might have been happening on the other side of the screen? Most of the discussion of 5e on this forum since I've been a member has been how hard it is to kill PCs. So I don't think your experience is the norm. Despite their best...

Well I won't argue with WOTC being terrible :)

Well I'm speaking from experience as a new DM (I started with 5e and LMoP) running stock monsters in stock adventures. Things worked just fine until about level 15 where I just threw the book away and just had them encounter things that looked cool.

It’s not bad though, it errs on the side of easy which is great for new DMs.

Yep, I’ve long said LMoP is a great introduction to 5e rules for experienced players, but not D&D itself.

A less experienced DM is wise to run published adventures to learn the ropes, and as we know the CR is erring on the easy side, which is actually great for new DMs. Of course, the first encounter in LMoP is a textbook case of throwing DMs in at the deep-end, but as I said, WOTC sucks at teaching...

That’s the bit I’m not getting. The CRs make all kinds of assumptions because to do otherwise is impossible. So the CRs are normalized around a bunch of averages: average party size, average player skill, average terrain etc etc. And for safety, errs on the side of easy. There are so many knobs...

The LP cover was a big loss. What a fantastic space for both artistic expression and info about the music, artists, instruments etc. I don’t miss vinyl, but I do miss that.

The CR for a combat encounter is simply a guide to know whether you’re in the sweet spot such that the outcome is uncertain (the cost to win being low, a few HP etc, or high, one or more characters dead or dying; and dialing that in for your particular group is an art, rather than something that...