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:love: I am far from retiring but I am aging at the same speed as you (assuming you're living on the surface of earth, naturally) and I have my big share of FOMO which is making me try (and sometimes stick to) new hobbies and experiences all the time. Following the mainstream is actually a huge...

I haven't moved since 2017, the official 5e line for me died after Xanathar, I am not going to make any move. For DMing, I have BECMI, 3.0 and 5e. As a player, I can play anything if they invite me to, I am as likely to play 5.5 as any other RPG.

I am not generally a huge fan of XP, and often I just make them up, just because I don't think it's worth the effort to make precise calculations. But if my players were to ask for more regulated XP rewards, I would base them on overcoming any in-game challenge in any pillar, as a group (no...

I think yours are very good examples, attaching a narrative description can help a lot. It probably sounds a lot like a wound system, so it may not exactly fit with exhaustion levels when they are supposed to represent simply getting tired, but if we want to use exhaustion levels when dropping...

As a note, it is a death spiral only if the PCs stubbornly insist on continuing with combats after combats. It is more supposed to be a deterrent: first, always play you best in combat because you might get a lingering penalty for failure; second, once you have a lingering penalty consider...

I prefer "rote" i.e. each spell being its own fixed recipe, also because I like how it creates a sort of divide or distance between magic itself and a spellcaster, as in: a spell is what it is and the Wizard who discovers/knows a spell is bound to the spell's rules. Too much freedom, and the...

It depends a lot on how frequently the PCs drop below 0hp. I don't have consistent rules, the adventures I run aren't normally very deadly, unless they are one-shots where long-term penalties don't really matter, so I usually don't even establish or announce house rules for dying until it...

No. An RPG is essentially a cooperative storytelling method where each 'player' makes decisions for one character, and a 'referee' runs the rest of the world, with usually a bit of randomness beyond anyone's control to create uncertainty. Any genre or theme, if you can tell a story then you can...

Since only 1/3 or so voted 'always' then the correct answer to this question is technically 'no'.

This, a million times. It's incredible and incredibly disappointing how the human mind has such difficulty accepting the continuum of nature, which always leaves something possible between any two, and pretends to fit everything into category boxes. And when their categorisation fails, they...

A major part of the appeal of a fantasy game or story, is usually stuff that doesn't make sense or cannot be fully explained, like how is it possible that undead are neither alive nor dead, or how does a beholder just floats? I don't like ruining the fantasy world trying to explain it...

As a DM who has mostly played with beginners including children since 5e, I think I understand a thing or two about 'complexity'. In the context of a RPG, you can say that complexity is in general about the need for making choices. Things that increase complexity are: the more frequently you...

It's just a consequence of changes in wealth distribution in the target countries. Disposable money of the upper class has increased, so more or less all industries see opportunities in luxury or high-end items, from 40$/oz 'gourmet' salt to several car manufacturers discontinuing low-end models...

Because a lot of people prefer the hobby of collecting books and talking/theorizing about the game, than actually playing the game which requires more effort, risk of failure and (yikes!) direct social contact?

Here's a summary of how I have done that in maybe the last 15 years or so. First of all, I do not define religions in advance anymore in my games, I have forsaken all that even before 5e. No planned list of deities given to the players, or anything set in stone. This is actually part of my more...

Never. As a player it just never came up. As a DM I just find it ridiculous that mortals can challenge deities, if they can be challenged in combat or with a magic mcguffin then they're not deities, they're caricatures. At the highest level of the game (even epic) I could feature the PCs facing...

Good luck. Everything meant for player characters in the PHB shapes all upcoming products.

The biggest omission for me is the Rogue - Swashbuckler subclass, it has been used so many times in games I've been, possibly even more than the basic Rogue - Thief at this point, that I was very surprised it wasn't included in the 2024 PHB. I always said it should have been in the 2014 PHB in...

As a player, I don't see why I wouldn't play any ruleset, as long as it is with people I like. As a DM it's another matter.

No, I don't think any class should be based on a companion. It's almost always troublesome, so it's best to have at most an option but not a default for any class.