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As a player, I have fun solving challenges. If I sense that the DM isn't giving me any, I walk out.

As a GM I love randomness as a way for me to be surprised by the narrative instead of being always pulling the strings. If you've read The Art Of Game Design, you might have seen an astute possible definition of "fun = pleasure + surprises". If I want my GMing to be "fun" rather than simply...

I designed and printed out action cards so that there is no need for players to look at the books. I did this for our family games as we didn't think of buying additional PHBs, but also because I believe that it's actually better not to let players use books at the table if they can avoid it.

Yes, you are missing the fact that D&D doesn't have "profit" among its game design purposes.

I have run only the first 5 adventures in the list, so my vote isn't fully valuable... but I have to go with Horror on the Hill, just because it simply happened to turn out a more fun time, but who knows whether it was really because of the module or the player group.

Equally nearly useless, besides the obvious magic items. In theory, the 2014 DMG would have been useful if I had used some of the optional modules, but I ended up running only fairly standard games. I didn't even use encounter building guidelines, and I quite disliked the examples on how to run...

As I mentioned before in many other threads, for one of the main technical reasons not to use 5.5e is the abundance of options for changing characters abilities after build, which IMXP makes everyone play a bit more lousy due to less risks. A non-technical reason, is that the latest edition...

I am not a fan of changing core mechanics. I would rather limit the amount of choices available, but there isn't a lot of margin for lowering the complexity just by that (I am assuming that your concern is the amount of abilities a PC can use at a given level). You could at least limit the...

I didn't have the impression that the 5.0 DMG rules for building encounters of a wanted difficulty and for creating new monsters have been exactly popular in the last 10 years. And now that the 5.5 DMG content is getting revealed, there are already discussions about how once again encounters...

Generally not.

I know for sure I bought the 3.0 books in 2001, but I don't remember if I have first joined the ENWorld forums or bought the books... my profile page says I joined in Jan 2002, it is possible I was just lurking before that time, but I also remember there was some server hiccup at some point...

Personally I would go the opposite direction, and strengthen the concept of "spells as recipes", with fixed results besides changing a few basic parameters. I would be interested in playing with a magic system where instead of spell slots the main limited resources were the actual spells components.

Honestly I never really followed the guideline. I don't endorse the idea that the DM should "plan the adventuring day" at all.

Referring to 5e 2014 only, I would instinctively say Sorcerer: smallest number of spells known and least complex rules. One aspect that decreases the complexity in particular, is not having to review spells preparation every day.

It's definitely WotC's strategy, they've mentioned recently that beginners/newcomers are considered to be a much larger share of their customer base than long-timers. In fact personally, I don't think I'll ever need another DMG, and I didn't really need the 2014 DMG either if it wasn't for the...

Absolutely true... and I really don't get it why it is so difficult to understand by the gamebase majority as well as the designers... D&D after 50 years and countless editions has grown into a multitude of games, it is played very differently at different tables, and each table has its own...

I agree that Wizard subclasses could be more imaginative than just the 8 traditional schools, but bundling all schools in a single subclass would very probably end up being like 3ed wizard specializations: standardized and unimaginative. A mere set of bonuses, discounts or numeric adjustments...

I could use something like that for when we have to wait months between two sessions of the same adventure. This is quite common for me, because nowadays I mostly intend to run one-shots with friends, but they inevitably end up needing multiple sessions... only that next session might not always...

As you said, I'd run it narratively. Depending on the situation, I will probably make something up that requires a bunch of rolls, just so that I don't have to decide myself if they succeed or not, and with what costs. It could be as complicated as using chase rules from the DMG, or ar simple...

By now I guess people are sick of hearing my opinions... too much player's entitlement and especially too many options for retraining or swapping abilities are the main reason why I won't switch to 5.5. It makes it annoyingly difficult to prepare an adventure if characters almost always have the...