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It's just the pain and embarrassment when your character dies. It's gruelling to roll up a new one and start over. It's especially gruelling to not have anyone else to blame. Can't blame the DM (assuming "hygienic" practices), can't blame the adventure (assuming a sandbox rather than AP). You...

XP for GP

I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.

You're speaking my language @lewpuls! I largely share your preferences and hope you keep writing articles here. It's interesting that old editions of D&D literally called XP an award while newer editions call it a reward. However I think D&D evolved in this direction not so much to appeal to a...

Yep exactly. If you don't allow any actions to interrupt anything else within the round, you're basically doing away with the concept of initiative entirely. This works fine, and I actually prefer it to most other initiative systems, which I think are too simple and too random. Mearls' system...

Initiative matters more than you think. Years ago I wrote a program to simulate (simple) D&D combats and was surprised to see how valuable initiative is. Think about it: if a combat lasts 4 rounds, it's a big difference whether you get 4 turns or only 3. In fact initiative matters so much I...

Yep -- there are two axes here: luck and deadliness. Old D&D is high luck/deadly. "Hardcore" 5e would be low luck/deadly, which is a different feel. It's more stressful. Old D&D is tense, but not overly stressful. The sloppiness of the math and the wackiness of the traps and monsters takes some...

I tried thoroughly to make 5e more scary and failed. It's unfortunately not as simple as editing the death and dying rules. Revivify is only a 3rd level spell. Also some classes are very hard to kill, like the barbarian, moon druid and monk. These classes are balanced for a game where...

I replaced the central plateau with Dwellers of the Forbidden City, and then had Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan inside that. It worked very well, even though the native guide I was using for foreshadowing got eaten by crocodiles right at the beginning.

Why not try making your own dungeon? :D It's easier than it seems with a good stocking procedure. I found this post at Delta's D&D very useful when I started making my own dungeons. The 5e DMG is not very helpful here. The advice about location based adventures is too vague and the random...

A good sandbox rewards boldness as well as caution. If the PCs do survive an overleveled location then they get correspondingly greater rewards. One of my issues with 5e for sandboxing is it's too easy for the PCs to prevent or ameliorate everything bad that can happen to them outside of an...

No way, tabletop gaming is way too demanding (for me at least), to function as an enabler of procrastination. It's not the sort of mindless distraction where you sit down thinking you're going to do some work tonight and then look at the clock later thinking "oh man, instead of catching up with...

Took us about 5 months playing 1-2 times a week. The PCs are celebrating the destruction of the Temple at a sumptuous feast with the Viscount in Verbobonc. Just then a page bursts through the doors shouting M'lord, M'lord, Giants are terrorizing the countryside! Then play the Ghostbusters...

To give you a different perspective from the majority of replies here, you don't HAVE to put a ton of work into rationalizing and expanding T1-4 to have a good time with it. I ran the Temple pretty much off the page as a big roguelike dungeoncrawl and we had a lot of fun. As others have...

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan inside Dwellers of the Forbidden City inside the Isle of Dread.

To me THAC0 is a must when running AD&D. I consider it a serious aesthetic mistake to convert to BAB. THAC0 is of a piece with the saving throw numbers on the character sheet: if you roll over these numbers, good things happen. The best way to use THAC0 is to say the attack is a hit if the roll...

Min-maxing does not properly mean "setting some stats to the minimum and others to the maximum". It comes from the game theory concept of the minimax strategy, which means minimizing the maximum loss. In D&D terms this would usually mean making your character strong in combat but without glaring...

Ok. Can I ask you not to quote me and ask me questions in a thread where I'm no longer allowed to respond? Most forums discourage people from engaging with the posts of someone who's been asked to leave the thread, which I think is fair.

I can't view recent posts in this thread, is it just me?

I can't view the last day or so of posts in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?482661-Harassment-in-gaming/ I would appreciate clarification about what's going on here. Is this just a bug, or are posts being deleted? Or am I personally banned from the thread? Umbran said...