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A mispelling of "Malmuira," which means dark skinned beauty, and was the name of a 3.5e druid animal companion that I had. I guess I just get really attached to imaginary (and real) pets

Well put, but wasn't 5e also designed to get away a little bit from the tactical combat focus of 4e? It seems that we see the game moving a bit back to 4e-style tactical play.

FWIW, I don't think the core game should reduce in complexity compared to 2014. I'm just pointing out that 2014 5e is easier to run than 5e with a whole bunch more options (as it seems 2024 will have). 2014 5e was a game that became popular because of its ease of use and accessibility. The...

My point is the reason I don't DM 5e anymore is because it has become too bloated and slow for my style of running the game. You like the increased complexity for your playstyle, so it makes sense that you are excited for the new edition, but the game is certainly driving off those of us who...

Not everyone plays with all the optional rules, not everyone plays with optimizers, and not everyone plays enough 5e to see every possible combination. I've never seen an eladrin nor a wildfire druid at the table. Probably the most common experience is people picking up 1 book--the PHB--and...

It's not that this is so overpowered, but now a misty step means the player has to choose from a menu of options, and then the DM has to make a bunch of saving throws and keep track of who failed. It adds tactical complexity but also adds to the stack of things to keep track of. So in the...

Settings don't dictate play, because TTRPGs are fundamentally open in the way they require completion by the players. But I think the best settings are narrow and specific in terms of their scope and general aesthetic, and the ones that are less interesting to me are the kitchen sink settings...

Yes, it's called bloat. In this case whereas before rules from Tasha's were optional, now they are part of the base game, and the base game is growing bigger and more complex. Each new piece adds to the DM's stack of things to worry about, and hence to their cognitive load. Teaching also adds...

For a lot of people post-Tasha's 5e was already too bloated and complicated. 5.5 seems to incorporating some of those additions to the base game plus adding new stuff. Rules adjudication is going to end up in the DM's lap. It will vary by table, but there are a lot of casual tables out there...

I think, for some people, it would be shame if wotc, as the official producer of d&d, stopped making products they considered worth purchasing. They are worried that wotc is moving to business models that focus on things that are optimized for monetization (online peripherals) but not really...

But the more options available to the PCs don't just make them more powerful, it makes it so that combat is longer as players peruse options and rules get adjudicated. It adds to the DM's cognitive load especially, as they are the ones constantly evaluating and keeping track of the gamestate...

Actually this is exactly how Whitehack works. You have to roll equal to or under a target value (ability score, etc), but higher is better, and meeting your target value is a critical. So it's like blackjack in a sense.

To add to this stack of games, The Black Sword Hack for sword and sorcery vibes.

Encounter: the players encounter the bandits at their camp. Their confrontation will possibly take the story to its end Event: If the PCs don't intervene, the bandits will attack the town in 1 week's time. Those are both things that the GM could prep for that are still situations responsive to...

We are working with fragmentary information here, because the longer text of what they mean by Step 3 plan encounters is missing from the preview. By planning encounters they might simply mean prep locations. For example, say the premise of an adventure is that bandits are attacking travelers...

There are plenty of great OSR modules that can be run as is, and require very little work to stitch into an ongoing campaign/setting. The Necrotic Gnome modules are probably the gold standard, here: Adventures

I think that level of world building is separate from what a module should provide. There's a reason that settings and modules are separate. I think when people say they run modules straight from the book they mean, given that they already have a setting, they simply place a module down and...

Shorter adventures are easier to write, and easier to run. Give me a town, a small area, 1-3 dungeons and 1-3 factions/interests and that's pretty easy to manage and pull off. When you get into the big epic adventure paths a lot of things can go wrong both in writing and in running

I think what you risk is taking dnd as a medieval fantasy simulator and turning it too explicitly into a settler-colonial simulator. As you mention it's implicit in the game already--adventurers killing things and taking stuff--but the fantasy medieval gloss makes it more palatable (perhaps)...

The complete phrase is "don't prep plots, prep situations." It does feel that your view is that what JA would call a "situation," however, still falls under the purview of "plot" These are good case studies, because they are avowedly old school location-based adventures. That is, they are not...