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:unsure: So... why is a knight rolling to... checks notes... "kick a chair"?

I definitely agree. A table's success at splitting the party into different locations and taking care of different tasks is going to depend a lot on the players at the table and their patience with other players and GM. Drawn out interactions with complex mechanical systems in the game like...

And even if they do, it has to make sense with their business plan - which wouldn't be a given with all the talk of mergers and challenges at achieving profitability. I think the number of subscribers a crowd-funded documentary would bring in is fairly small.

To my mind, this is the single, thorniest issue you’ve raised. How to keep people engaged, whether the Heavy or not, when another player has the spotlight when the party is split up. And a major part of the solution, pretty much whatever the system, is the GM keeping focus moving around the...

To win at chess, depending on your approach, you may have the goal to control the center of the board, to threaten your opponent’s queen, or any number of other intermediate goals in checkmating your opponent’s king. If the challenge might be there to put up the possibility of a new goal… isn’t...

But in order to win, the final goal of the game, you need to have intermediate goals of scoring - including scoring touchdowns. And the goal of winning the game is likely just an intermediate goal to making it to the play-offs or having a winning season. Goals at all sorts of levels. If the...

Depends on the goals you're looking at. Failing to sneak past the guard is a fail state for the goal of infiltrating undetected. It's probably not a fail state for getting into he dungeon to kill the BBEG, though it may complicate that goal. It's probably not a fail state for the goal of...

There are going to be a variety of levels of goals, some immediate, some longer term and there should be challenges, some immediate, some cumulative, that should be capable of foiling those goals and leading to a fail state. Exactly how they do so is going to be complex, and what exactly...

But are those "engaging and fair challenges" capable of actually foiling the goal? Of causing PCs to fail at achieving them? Should they not be capable of doing so?

Well, what do you think an appropriate goal for a GM is if the player's goal is success? Are they not supposed to set up challenges capable of foiling that goal?

I think that is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what Mearls said. I mean, this really is into the "When did you stop beating your wife" kind of territory in which it looks like there's no way for him to get an even break from you. Really, what's the source of your utter mad-on...

This is why it’s important for the adults involved to give it some kind of meaning for the kids. If you’re not keeping score, chances are some kids in the team are and are actually noticing whether they’re winning or losing. So, you redirect them into ascribing some other meaning than winning...

I’ve seen this happen before, and when I experienced it, it was largely because there were differences in how active managers were in pushing forward the recognition compared to other managers. For example, when I was a software QAer, I worked at a place where marketing and sales got a LOT more...

Well, that’s part of the difference between running a published scenario or AP vs designing adventures/situations based on the PCs. Not all adventures are suitable for all PCs under the sun so a bit of tailoring, whether of the published scenario or PCs (or both) will be in order. If you want to...

I know the rules on all of the odd-numbered pages, but not the even-numbered ones.

Always counting as having Leomund's tiny hut prepared means they can always cast it as a ritual - expanding the number of classes who can cast that poorly balanced spell Even better - it's 1d6+cleric level.

Oh, if only it were that simple.

Max Frankel, retired NYT journalist and long-time editor, has died. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/23/nx-s1-5338006/max-frankel-new-york-times-editor-dead

Maybe he was aiming it at the demographic that's always ragging on "kids today" wanting a softer game?

There's probably some influence of Critical Role and other streamed play games affecting the amount of roleplaying younger players want to do. But my daughter and her friends were doing it on chat servers years before Critical Role debuted. No rules, they'd just get on and role play. They were...