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    D&D 5E (2014) Restrictive DMs and player enjoyment

    That's not my experience at all, thank goodness. I wouldn't have been playing D&D all these years either as a DM or as a player if that were true. Engaging in an RPG with people who aren't enjoying it (or who don't care if I'm enjoying it) would be the worst way to spend four hours on a...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Restrictive DMs and player enjoyment

    When gaming with my current groups, I prefer a less-restrictive DM -- open to re-skinning and making modifications to class features and spells -- in large part because I know the DMs and the players and I would not foresee players pushing boundaries that would be a bridge too far for me. I...
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    No apology needed. I just didn't understand. We're good.
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    I don't really understand what you're trying to convey. I'm making efforts to ensure that nothing I say is interpretted to apply universally to all games and gamers, that that I'm expressing opinions and not judgments and certainly not Truths from on high. I gathered from you've said in this...
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    If I appeared to be making a fuss, I badly miscommunicated. I have no problem with the DM determining what happens in the PCs absence or the state of things upon the PCs' arrival. I agree completely. It's a choice and it's agency. In D&D games that I run and play, the consequences of that...
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    All the influence is very much overstating it. The only influence the players have is chosing not to engage with the guild. What happens instead is completely DM-driven and is largely independent of the players' decisions. Does the guild thrive in the absence of the PCs? Does it struggle due to...
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    The GM's World, the Players' Campaign

    I think the intention was that the players discover everything through play. The PCs have familiarity with their own world, at least in part.
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    You (the players) don't explore the world you built. Your characters do. If it's important to the players to experience an unknown environment, then they won't want the level of agency that Hussar is advocating for. The Forgotten Realms is well defined in source books and expansive fiction...
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    So what are your informal expectations...or rules, for a RPG?

    I don't think anyone claimed in that other thread that all gamers have mostly the same informal social contracts or rules. These things are specific to the participants. And even among the same group of participants, the expectations vary from game to game and campaign to campaign. And, again...
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    Dragon Reflections #70

    This was the first issue of Dragon that I purchased. I recall that my players struggled with the Mechica adventure.
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    D&D 5E (2024) Where should optional rules go and why?

    Oh, I really do need to be careful what I wish for.
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    D&D 5E (2024) Where should optional rules go and why?

    It's the 21st century. I want the optional rules at my fingertips (and the fingertips of everyone in the group). I want to check boxes and slide dials to tune the game to the everyone's taste for whatever campaign we're planning, and then I want the e-PHB/DMG to generate a customized one-volume...
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    Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

    Informal social contracts aren’t secret.
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    D&D 5E (2014) Thievery in 5e - still relevant?

    It is true that exact accounting of food supplies, rations, and the weight of mundane equipment would absolutely break me and send me running from the game. Is that the kind of deep dark thing you're talking about? :)
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    Digging Into Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk

    I had hoped this book would excite me, but this one doesn't interest me at all. Including a lightly revised version of a previously published adventure killed it for me, and branching off into psionics and boring eldritch horrors raised it from the dead and killed it again more emphatically. I...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Do you allow Bladesingers to cast Mending, Shillelagh or Magic Stone as part of the attack action?

    I admit I do not follow your arguments about specificity. The bladesinger feature seems to me to be the specific rule that supercedes the general rules around casting times for cantrips. I get that you don't see it that way. I just can't figure out why that is. There's going to be no consensus...
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    Unpopular opinions go here

    I had Star Trek bubble gum cards before there ever was a Star War.
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    D&D 5E (2014) Do you allow Bladesingers to cast Mending, Shillelagh or Magic Stone as part of the attack action?

    If a class feature doesn't specify which cantrips, then the feature applies to all the cantrips. Frankly, you're inventing restrictions that aren't there. The cantrip doesn't have to have a casting time of 1 action. The cantrip doesn't have to be an attack. The text is quite clear, not vague at...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Do you allow Bladesingers to cast Mending, Shillelagh or Magic Stone as part of the attack action?

    The general rule is that cantrips are cast with the casting time defined in the spell desciption. The specific rule is that bladesingers can cast their cantrips as part of an attack action. That's the point of the class feature -- to override the normal casting time and allow the cantrips to be...
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    What is the single best fantasy novel of all time?

    And we’ll just pretend that Titus Alone never existed.
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