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    Kyle Brink Interviewed by Teos Abadia (Alphastream) on OGL, WotC, & D&D

    There are good things that sell poorly and bad things that sell well. On average, however, good things tend to sell better than bad things.
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    Kyle Brink Interviewed by Teos Abadia (Alphastream) on OGL, WotC, & D&D

    According to this interview, he started 44 years ago and has a still-active campaign that he's been running continuously, across multiple editions, since 1988. So, I'd call that a "yes." :)
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    Kyle Brink Interviewed by Teos Abadia (Alphastream) on OGL, WotC, & D&D

    So... my take after watching: TL;DR: I think Brink's heart is in the right place. I'm not convinced his read on the overall culture at Wizards is accurate. The top executives seem to be generally hands-off, open to arguments from both the pro- and anti-OGL factions, but the pro-OGL faction has...
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    Kyle Brink (D&D Exec Producer) On OGL Controversy & One D&D (Summary)

    It's quite possible that he does, though. "Rings of Power" owes its existence largely to the fact that Jeff Bezos is a big Tolkien lover; and "Meta" is taken from the Metaverse in Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash." A lot of Silicon Valley bigwigs have strong connections to geek culture. If I were...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    Looking at your question again, I realized that the median is more appropriate than the mean here. I just added it to my original table: DICE MEAN (AVG) TIME MEDIAN TIME STD DEV 1 6.00 4.00 5.46 2 8.73 7.00 6.13 3 10.56 9.00 6.39 4 11.93 11.00 6.54 5 13.02 12.00 6.63 6 13.94 13.00...
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    Health Die Mechanic Idea

    It seems like this is still a hit point mechanic; you're just counting up to whatever level of Stress/Heat/xxx equals "dead," rather than counting down to zero, and using a different system to compute damage from a hit. I'm with @Thourne -- what is the specific goal you're trying to accomplish?
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    Kyle Brink (D&D Exec Producer) On OGL Controversy & One D&D (Summary)

    Agreed. I mean, I'd love to know what happened and why, but I don't expect to get that information for a long time. Anything WotC tells us today about how we got here is going to be, at the very least, carefully spun; and it may well be total fiction. We have no way to fact-check it except...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    The "long tail" of cases where you go seven or more rounds balances out the more common case that you go five or less. Remember, that long tail includes instances where the timer goes extremely long. There is a 2.6% chance that you could go twenty rounds on a single die! It only takes a few of...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    Continuing with this theme of "clock with variations" -- you could have a pool of d6s, and each round (or whatever your time unit is) you roll one of those dice. NON-EXPLODING VERSION (if you don't want the risk of a "yahtzee" that slams the timer to zero in a single turn) 6: Put the die back...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    Yup, I get the same values. In general, larger numbers of smaller dice will yield more consistent results. (9d4 and 3d6 have roughly the same average duration, but you're far less likely to see your countdown expire on the first round with 9d4.) If you want to ensure an absolute minimum...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    I threw together a Google Sheet which did the calculations for a given dice pool. For each round, I calculate the probability that you've hit zero, one, two, etc. dice on that round, based on the probabilities for the previous round. I ran it out to 100 rounds, which seemed good enough. The...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Introducing the COUNTDOWN DICE Mechanic!

    Here's the average number of rounds and standard deviation for dice pools from 1 to 10: DICE AVG (MEAN) TIME MEDIAN TIME STD DEV 1 6.00 4.00 5.46 2 8.73 7.00 6.13 3 10.56 9.00 6.39 4 11.93 11.00 6.54 5 13.02 12.00 6.63 6 13.94 13.00 6.69 7 14.72 13.00 6.74 8 15.41 14.00 6.77...
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    D&D 5E (2024) What are the top 3 things, above all else, you want from One DnD?

    1. Fix balance -- not just classes and species, but also subclasses, spells, feats, magic items, invocations. Trim the OP choices and buff the trap options. (There's a lot more of the latter than the former.) 2. Sort out short rests. I'd prefer 5-minute short rests 2/day as the official rule...
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    History Check: Open Game Content from WotC

    If I understand the rules of the OGL correctly, Wizards had to release the edited versions as open content, didn't they? That's the "viral" component of the OGL: If you use someone else's open content, you have to make it available to others under the same terms. I'd think that applies even if...
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    D&D 5E (2014) How does Careful Spell metamagic work with Web?

    Yeah, that would be my ruling. The most rigorous interpretation would be that Careful Spell doesn't work on web at all; but I think letting it work on the first save is a reasonable stretch.
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    Bob World Builder is soliciting interview questions for D&D Executive Producer Kyle Brink

    I think there is a pretty strong chance of the 3E and 3.5E SRDs getting released to Creative Commons. From WotC's point of view, there is very little downside to doing that. The 4E SRD might be a tougher sell, since it wasn't previously available under the OGL, so they're releasing genuinely...
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    DC Announces New Movie and TV Plans

    What's interesting, though, is that "shades of gray" here doesn't seem to be a euphemism for "our hero is a murdering jerk but you have to root for him because the people he's murdering are worse." The Scylla and Charybdis of stories that delve into moral dilemmas are "Doing the right thing is...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Can I cast a reaction spell and an action/BA spell on my turn.

    Sorcerers can't do that combination, and the bonus action rule is why. I'm saying that if they get rid of the bonus action rule, there would need to be some other constraint to prevent this. Offhand, the only way I know of to throw two fireballs in a turn is to dip two levels in fighter for...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Can I cast a reaction spell and an action/BA spell on my turn.

    In the way that it confuses the hell out of everybody, as demonstrated in this thread. A quick fix would be to change it to "You can only cast one non-reaction, non-cantrip spell per turn." That would be easier to understand, though still a bit of an annoying gotcha. However, my preferred...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Can I cast a reaction spell and an action/BA spell on my turn.

    There's nothing in the flying rules that says you wait until your turn to fall. As soon as you stop being able to fly, down you go, no matter whose turn it is. The fall takes place on the caster's turn, so feather fall is prohibited. Strictly speaking, in fact, it's debatable that "misty step...
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