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This looks great. I really like the components and how deluxe it all feels. It matches the price for the HeroQuest First Light game, which I think makes sense. Can't wait to get my hands on this one.

That's true. We started work in early 2011 on what 5e could be. At the same time, I had to make the case that: Having an active, healthy TTRPG was good for the D&D brand. We could produce a game that would make customers happy within a very limited budget. I think we had maybe 20% of the...

Franchise model is how things worked from 2014 to 2020 or so. One group steered D&D and worked with licensees to set up their content. If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, you might notice that they lean heavily into lore from Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and the Baldur's...

As another example - the annual events like Tomb of Annihilation are 100% a byproduct of a franchise model. If you liked that era, this might be a signal that they want to go back to something like that.

I think this means that in the future, stuff like Baldur's Gate 3 and the D&D movie would have actual tie-in products. IME the franchise model means that D&D looks more like Warhammer. Everything in Warhammer is connected. If I play Space Marine 2, the events in that game are part of the 40k...

The big thing with making it a bonus action is that it might mess up classes that rely on it for their class features, like the ranger. It's a little more complex, but I think in general you can afford to slow down turns a little if you just have one player. I like that nat 20 benefit on...

It's weird that the rules for solo play focus on combat while the scenarios focus on non-combat. It makes sense, in that 5e combat scales down poorly (creatures, especially at high level, deal out damage assuming that multiple PCs are on hand to mitigate the impact. 5.5's shift in encounter...

Wow, this is great!

I think it's a bigger issue with people having a hard time making friends or committing to social events. It's a real thing.

It's a particularly acute problem for casters. So much of their power is locked away in spell slots. Teasing it out to build a subclass with oomph is tricky. Taking a summoner as an example. This is bad design, so please just take it as an illustration: Summoning via spells forces me to fit a...

I think we've hit the limit of what you can do with the subclass approach. Subclasses are simply too narrow to provide enough design space to go really far afield. If D&D switches to monthly releases - there's a new product a month starting in July onward for this year at least - we're going to...

I wasn't crazy about the new art, but this mini really nails it for me. Love the wings and the tail blade.

Complete Fighter's Handbook. I really liked how it presented a new approach to weapon proficiencies. It put fighters on par with rangers and paladins (in my games I allowed only fighters to use the weapon proficiency rules from that book). I also liked the concept of kits. While they eventually...

I think the collective D&D community still does not quite grasp how much of a win the OGL issue ended up being. Everyone has crazy open access to a game system with 10+ years and millions of dollars of effort poured into it. It's such an unmitigated win for creators.

TTRPG lines have made a decided shift toward fewer releases. I think Paizo is the only company still doing monthly, physical releases for a game line. There are a bunch of reasons for this: Back in the day, distributors really liked product lines that had monthly releases. A line meant a...

It zoomed up after the release date, and then bounced up near 100 once stores started selling out. From what I have heard, it sold out at UK Games Expo on the first day. Looking at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, it looks like both chains are ordering more books. I suspect that this is selling...

It's really tricky to ask people to learn a new mechanic that does something the game already does. That goes double if the procedure is different but the net result is the same.

Doing some semi-necromancy to say I 100% agree. They're so easy to run, they actually cash in on the idea that adventures save me time.

I’ve run several adventures from both collections, and they’ve always been a blast.