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I wouldn't consider using sleep in that manner out-of-combat. Or, at least, if we consider that to be OOC then a surprise fireball that ends combat before it begins is also an OOC spell, which seems like a stretch.

LAN parties were involved. But it's not like there were no viable alternatives. My friends would often bring over their game consoles (I wasn't allowed to have any, except Game Boy for whatever reason) and we'd play games like Goldeneye until the wee hours. Took 5 minutes of setup, if that.

Yes, I have read about the Skinner box. Where do you think I got the idea? I admit I'm no expert (I work with computers, though my sister has done extensive lab work with rats), but if there was only a 1 in a 100 chance of food (with the rest being nothing or shocks) do you still think the rat...

I can see what they're saying. Purely by a reading of RAW you'd have every reason to believe that AD&D was deadlier than 5e. That said, based on experience, I agree with you. The AD&D games I played (several different groups) were the same or less deadly than 5e. It was easier to accidentally...

Yeah, I only played in one AD&D game that used the individual rewards. However the other games tended to have generous rewards for things like good roleplaying and achievement of goals. There were some individual rewards, but oftentimes it was for the entire party.

Oh, yeah, I wasn't suggesting it needs to lead to a big payoff constantly. 1% for a big payoff is fine, as long as you have a reasonable number of smaller payoffs along the way. Your response read to me like you were saying it was no problem to have a 1% chance of any payoff whatsoever.

IME, 1% is way too low to incentivize serious exploration. Sure, they'll still do a cursory inspection, but they're not going to spend significant table time if most of the time exploration results in nothing, traps, or a wandering monster. To use the analogy of a lab rat, if a rat has to push...

There's really nothing stopping a 5e DM from bringing back training rules (and the gold required) if so desired. IME, it's still fairly easy to incentivize exploration. You just have to include worthwhile things for the players to find. If they can get good stuff by exploring, then they'll...

Yup, I've played with it and while it was interesting and somewhat entertaining, my main takeaway was just how far how AI has yet to go. Nowhere near the quality of even a mediocre (much less good) GM.

If I ask whether I know how to tie my shoes and get a "no" response, and then ask if I know about troll vulnerabilities and get "yes", I'm going to quickly start to suspect that I'm getting randomized responses because that doesn't make rational sense. Moreover, characters in many editions of...

Would your games be better or worse if you randomly determined DCs? It ought to be pretty apparent that tying your shoes is typically easier than knowing trollish vulnerabilities. However, if you set the DC to a randomizer you could end up with a DC 25 to tie your shoes and 5 to know troll...

Again, something like jumping or bending a bar are relatively simple and don't require an AI to begin with. The parts that are hard (even with an AI) are the more open ended things. Like do I know if trolls have vulnerabilities? Do I know what trolls eat? And until an AI can do that with high...

No, an AI can't create it's rules as it goes. Or, at least, those rules aren't likely to be based on anything functional without a good (large) starting set. Unlike what you see in fiction, current AIs aren't actually capable of though. They just use their data set to calculate the most...

Open ended questions? I don't think so. A pre-determined list of questions the programmers anticipated, sure. Text based adventures like Zork have existed for decades, but were always limited in that they can't do anything the programmers didn't explicitly code for. The advantage of an AI is...

It depends on kind of action you're setting a DC for. For example, for a jump check you might set the DC at 10 + distance in feet. That is easy. On the other hand, setting the DC for more open ended possibilities is far more challenging. Something like, does my character know if trolls have...

I think there's plenty a person can learn from those shows, but it requires perspective. If you were trying to learn carpentry, and you watched a video of an expert carpenter at work, would you despair at not being able to produce the same level of craftsmanship the moment you started actually...

I don't know about academic per se. I've known plenty of academics that were absolutely terrible at teaching. But I do think that the best person for the job would be a teacher. Someone with a real gift for it. Growing up, I spoke English, Hungarian, and German. And when I started to learn...

Fair enough. Have you considered using premade maps? Dyson Logos did a ton of fantasy battle maps a while back that I think were available on DriveThruRPG (just as an example). I wouldn't be surprised if other options exist. It might be interesting to see if there are any AI map makers out...

In fairness, you don't need to go that far with it. While I have done maps and such in the past, recently when we play online (because players are sick) I just run things ToM and use the VTT primarily for dice rolling and automation. It might not be quite as cool as when I had maps, but it's...

There's some truth to this, but it isn't cut and dry. I've run games for as few as two players and as many as eight. The small games are very easy to keep on track but require a large degree of interaction from the DM (IME, significantly greater than 50%). The big games are hard to keep on...