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I've heard that Ed Greenwood would have Elminster poof in to save the day when his players were about to TPK or screw up, and then Elminster would berate them for their ineptitude. As irritating as that would be, I would still prefer it to secret fudging. The problem with secretly fudging...

I think the 13th Age mechanic is pants-on-head dumb (never read or played that game, but I dislike almost everything I've heard about it). My alternative suggestion is to give the PCs the benefits of a short rest after an exploration "encounter" (e.g. complex trap, puzzle, maze, finding the...

Yeah, I don't think a rest really in itself* affects the rhythm of the game, at least not in a sense that would warrant your analogy to scenes in movies. It's more like watching the action hero reload his gun. I maintain that the balance of combat, exploration and social encounters is more...

I disagree with the premise that rests do the same thing in D&D as character exposition or comic relief scenes in movies. I think dramatic pacing has more to do with the balance between the "three pillars" (combat, exploration, social) in the campaign. Rests are just a strategic decision...

There's been too much emphasis in this conversation on what the players feel. This inevitably raises the question of whether completely unnoticeable fudging does anything harmful to the game. A good game is like being in love: it only counts if everyone involved is participating authentically...

It's a good idea to give the players a resource they can use to bend the game away from disaster. This is much preferable to DM fudging as a means of doing this. You don't need a metagame resource for this though--this is what limited-use magic items are for! E.g. potions of flying/gaseous...

I think this scenario was more difficult to DM than you think, and you interpreted some of his poor decisions as slights against you when in reality he was just overloaded. To help him improve, you should have amicably opened the subject of how best to handle this scenario with 5e. Trying to...

IMO damage should be randomly distributed to enemies in the same general melee area. There's no point allowing players to choose their target precisely unless you're using miniatures and facing rules to problematize focused fire. This is RAW in 1e.

I agree. I like how Basic and 1e are fun to play even if the DM and players don't care much about the story. I am running the Temple of Elemental Evil right now as a pure dungeon bash and it's great. I as the DM didn't even know the backstory of the temple until the players were halfway...

Treasure XP doesn't really steer the game away from combat on its own. Players avoid unnecessary combat in early D&D for other reasons: you die a lot (at low levels, less so later on) and starting over at level 1 hurts! Treasure XP is about making treasure more fun. It makes treasure exciting...

I think if you're going to the trouble ahead of time to make monster cards it would be easiest to simply copy THAC0 from the monster attack table? It's the 0 column (THAC0 = To-Hit-Amor-Class-0). I use THAC0 in my 1e AD&D game. I'm running the TOEE so whenever I use a monster for the first time...

I generally prefer the older editions, and I wish they had kept the pagecount down with 5e, but I still have to say that it probably would be easier to learn than you think. The Starter Set is designed to be playable without any other books, so you could start playing that now and read through...

You could allow unconscious PCs to get up and escape with the rest of the party, Final Fantasy-style. I honestly wouldn't consider that out of place with the rest of 5e's death & dying rules from a simulation perspective. Especially if you imagine "unconscious" as not literally unconscious but...

Isn't any discussion of house rules to make death saves more difficult kind of academic when 5e Clerics have Spare the Dying and Healing Word? I think any house rules that nerf natural stabilization/healing will only make Clerics (and other healing classes, to a somewhat lesser extent) more...

I'm just saying that to me it's not even a red flag that this adventure has a Beholder in it. Have you run the original KotB? If not I would consider it. It's only 32 pages so you might have time to read the whole thing rather than making a snap judgement based on one encounter. I don't mean...

There's a Spectator (beholderkin) in the old module The Secret of Bone Hill. When I ran that I actually changed it to a full Beholder (I don't like beholderkin...except for Gas Spores, they're kind of funny). They were bound to guard a book, and couldn't mess with the PCs unless they messed with...

The most important thing is for the encounter to be to new and scary to the players, not just the characters. If the players know that the encounter is not actually very dangerous or disruptive, and you're relying on getting them to see it from the PCs' perspective for effect, it's like trying...

Not familiar with the HackMaster version but it's hard for me to imagine a low-level sandbox that couldn't be fairly described as a wonky kill-the-PCs thing. That's just how they play. When you're on the bottom almost everything is higher level than you. That being said, it's not like "anything...

Because smaller numbers are easier to deal with. The smallest dice that gives the desired granularity should be used. To me it's definitely easier to check wandering monsters with 1 on a d6 rather than 18-20 on a d20 like in 5e. I can't think of any reason to use the same dice for everything. It...

I would let the TPK occur, if it weren't for the fact that Bob is absent. I can accept a campaign ending in an unexpected way but all players should be present. So I guess I would end the session and let Bob get his PC in the battle somehow next time. If the PCs still lose then so be it. We...