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I just started this thanks to @SlyFlourish. It's very well done

I find dungeons in 5e work best when you treat each room as a discrete encounter, 5 room dungeon style (could be more than 5 rooms, but the point is that each room is there to pace the session). ...but if you do that, you aren't really running a dungeon crawl, which for me centers around the...

Mork Borg has a free version with more readable layout Necrotic Gnome products are probably the pinnacle of usable layout, including their adventures. The OSR in general has emphasized layout not just for expression (as in Mork Borg), but to aid in usability at the table. On the player side...

I was skeptical about this game but it looks like it's bringing a lot of people in to the OSR that might not have been interested otherwise. Both in terms of games but especially in terms of play style. This should be the lightbulb moment, IMO:

Pathfinder 2e seems to have figured out more precise encounter building. I think it's more that 5e's design wants to have it both ways, promising balanced encounters out of the box but in reality leaving it up to DMs to actually make the system work. FWIW, I think if the system is telling you...

The Dolmenwood RPG (which uses a house ruled b/x as a system) has an option for XP for exploration. I think I will use this when I run it

This context is probably what makes me most uncomfortable about dnd violence. It's not necessarily the violence as such, since violence in games is often just a metaphor for conflict in general, a way of concretizing overcoming an obstacle (think violence in even a cartoonish video games, like...

Given that "corporations are always self interested" I don't feel badly that some people on an internet forum or a reddit thread are criticizing them, and I never understand these kinds of attempts to shut down criticism by incorrectly claiming that its simply one dimensional complaining. They...

I think Gavin Norman said it best about about b/x: It's not even my favorite OSR game but it perfectly sets/captures the tone of dnd-style fantasy, and in particular can do low-fantasy settings better than 5e.

I think it makes sense that a new medium/interface (ToM vs 2d map vs 3d environment) would have some affect on how players approach the game, though not in any one direction. That is, it might enhance creativity in some ways and inhibit it in others. For example, for me, there are aspects of...

I can't speak to 4e, but I wouldn't say 3e for all its complexity was designed assuming that the majority of the player base would be using automation tools, even things like spreadsheets. Whereas now it is clear that some very large % of players are using dnd beyond or a vtt. At a certain...

Arguably, though, 5e as-is already works best when you have some sort of automation tool, such as dnd beyond. For example, we have one player who likes to play magic character and has a difficult time understanding how characters are built, even after many years of playing. This player would...

I could see a ruleset designed for VTT being better for some groups even without the VTT. The point remains is that one could see wotc start to design their ruleset assuming the use of automation tools (whether character creators or non-basic VTTs). It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing...

To each their own, but to me this level of consumerism is gross and antithetical to what I enjoy about TTRPGs, which is an outlet for individual creativity that is not fundamentally about just buying more stuff. To the point that I would find playing with a DM that invested a lot into such...

I can't find it now but I feel like they were trying to do this in some of the early playtests even. I remember they had more hard-coded rules for social mechanics that struck me as being easier to automate

Fair. I do think that if people could self promote there is the possibility of a lot of spam. But I think reddit as a blogroll would be very helpful; it's basically my favorite channel on the OSR discord. What I like about r/OSR is when people actually post something they created. What I...

In what way do designers feel that it is hostile to them? Just curious

Classic Against the Cult of the Reptile God Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh OSR Winter's Daughter The Hole in the Oak Lorn Song of the Bachelor @Gus L 's Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier Honey in the Rafters (for mice)

Classic: 1991 "black box" basic set - step by step instructions for a new DM 2e's Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide - Jennell Jaquays's DM advice OSR: Principia Apocrypha - distilled advice from the OSR The Black Hack 2e - excellent and creative set of tools for quick and dirty dungeon and...

Yes - there is such a thing called "games journalism" and people tend to following gaming news, if that's what you mean by the amount of 'research' on display here