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You'll see terms that like capitalized in modern boardgame rules They aren't capitalized in 5E because the WotC braintrust over-corrected (or corrected in the wrong way) from 4E by writing the 5E rules in walls of conversational text, instead of using effective instructional formatting. They...

Is D&D a hobby, or a game? Do you play boardgames? I've been involved with the local hobby boardgaming scene and convention for 20 years. During that time, the popularity of boardgames has increased five-fold. It's now genuinely a pastime with a broad appeal, rather than a niche for gamers like...

'Accessible' maybe by hardcore gamers. But D&D is expanding into the general public, people who balk at playing boardgames that have more than 10 pages of rules. I've seen how the boardgame hobby pulled back from more complex, lengthy games as it grew massively in popularity in recent years...

This is a crucial point. I've been DMing for 40 years, and when I look at the dozens and dozens of articles on forums and videos on Youtube about DMing, even I get intimidated. World-building. player engagement, running sandboxes, creating villains, crafting a mystery, etc. etc. Many content...

Making the books enjoyable to read is not mutually exclusive with presenting the mechanical systems clearly and efficiently. You can put the fluff in introductory paragraphs or sidebars. But burying procedures in walls of conversational text is terrible instructional design, and makes an already...

I know that even at the peak of Pathfinder, the principles at Paizo commented that half their books are sold to people who use them as reading material. I suspect those numbers are similar for D&D today. IMHO, it seems more likely that the incoherence of D&D's core books is down to trying to...

D&D is a complex game. Far, far more complicated than even the most complicated popular boardgames. Like the boardgaming hobby, D&D is growing dramatically, and that growth is almost all coming from the more casual end of the market. So there's a tension between the system and the capabilities...

An example of a TPK (going from memory, and making reasonable assumptions). Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Party of four brand-new level 1 PCs venture into an abandoned inn. Three troglodytes are waiting in ambush (the adventure says they're "hiding to avoid detection."). The trogs get a...

But the chart itself says "Please assume that participants in these activities are following currently recommended safety protocols when possible."

The thing that stands out about Nentir Vale is it's one of the few D&D settings that is boots-on-the-ground scale. 200 miles by 150 miles should easily cover all of the adventuring locales for a party to reach at least 10th level. It's a setting at a scale that is meant to run actual adventures...

I'm not sure I agree with going to a movie being a highest risk activity. This is my experience from taking the family to Jurassic Park last week: 1. Buy tickets online. 2. Arrive at multiplex. Zero people in lobby except one staff member at the one food concession open. 3. Walk into theatre...

Preparing for exploration and preparing for combat encounters both take time and skill. Since 3E, play culture has emphasized the latter, so most GMs have put effort into crafting encounters. If you came up with 3E, you probably feel creating and running combat encounters is a core task of being...

You might want to read some of the modules being referred to. Caverns of Thracia and the Dark Tower have wildly varying encounter threats. Thracia is supposed to be for low-level PCs, and there's SPOILER a frickin' Lich in a hidden temple area. /SPOILER. The notes for the room says the PCs will...

You're neglecting to take into account how fragile PCs were in AD&D, especially at levels 1-4. Every character had lower HP, and clerics might have only one or two healing spells. Thieves and Magic-users were usually toast if they took a couple hits. If a front-line fighter went down, a thief or...

My AD&D group routinely ran away from combats - I'd estimate around every second session. The whole approach to adventures and combat were different from modern norms, and much like the OP describes. Scouting was absolutely essential. A thief/rogue always scouted ahead, typically using...

As someone who has long experience with both published and homebrew adventures, one reason I still use the latter is because my imagination isn't infinite. I've been creating my own adventure content for 40 years, and at this point I've come to recognize that I often plow the same furrows. A...

RPG forums are not even remotely representative of the real-world D&D player base. Build and balance culture is very prominent on forums, but really not a big thing in the real world. The WotC braintrust made this clear when they were promoting D&D Next; their polls showed them that hardcore...

As someone who spends a lot of time on RPG forums and has heard of several of the nominated games, I'm well aware my experience is not representative of the wider RPG public. Everyone on this forum, heck pretty much everyone who has even heard of the Ennies, makes up a tiny and unrepresentative...

GMs can do that too. For interesting locations or travel sequences, I'll prepare a few sentences of crafted descriptive text. It's not really any different from preparing bits of dialogue, which a lot of GMs do as well.

What you're describing is exactly how written fiction and audiobooks work. And those dramatic formats seem pretty popular.