Search results

Personally, I find that Dancey does a good job of taking the industry's pulse. I also have a soft spot for him as a driving force behind the OGL. The 2011 interview has Dancey talking about big suprises for D&D in the works. My take is that he was looped in on the D&D Next initiative. Hasbro is...

It's from the Escapist interview series with Ryan Dancey and others from 2011 (penned by current WotC Communications Manager Greg Tito). As they launched and continue to build up 5e, D&D seems to be under the gun with the under $50M downsizing and a plan to create a $50M+ brand using the D&D...

Didn't get the sense that the Steadfast was a matriarchy at all. Certainly the leadership of the Steadfast is a mix of men and women (and one ruling council), with kings ruling a number of the Nine. The current Amber Pope is female. The Order of Truth doesn't offer guidance on gender roles or...

I liked the approach in Pathfinder's NPC Codex.

With magic item frequency low by default and many spells being concentration, I don't think this will come up often enough that I would see the need to house rule it. Also, an extra +1 doesn't carry that much oomph in 5e like in previous editions.

Yeah, some ready to go options are always nice to have as a fallback. I typically do all the design work for my sessions. I occasionally run whole modules. But what would be nice is some NPCs, delves, etc that can be pulled out when session prep time is cut short, or when the players go off on a...

I will say this about Spelljammer/Planescape. One of the earliest things we did was flood Krynn with off-world steel and make a crazy fortune. We were ruining the local exchange rates whenever we showed up, and eventually had bounties put on our heads by Krynn steel merchants.

That's a little less focused than I was expecting. :erm: Sounds like concepts that didn't fit into another product. I suppose you could have said the theme was "RPG stuff" or "book with rules". :p

Here's an idea: a simple carrot on a stick, rather than a more direct mechanic. This would work well if you are looking for humorous, creative, over the top, or unlikely solutions to the problems that arise. You could do an approach like the TV show @Midnight and award points for the answers...

Cities Skylines on Steam is amazing. I had seen all the glowing reviews and finally gave it and got it last week. It is being hyped as a SimCity killer and it totally is. (Not a high bar after SimCity 2013, nuff said!) I could even see using it to create a city map for use in a modern campaign...

The question at hand is whether 50/50 saturation of a medium is the same as 50/50 saturation of a particular product. I think D&D has moved closer to 50/50 than ever before. They've worked admirably to expand their secondary target demographics. If movies have 50/50 attendance split, you...

The type of clothing and areas of bare skin aren't going to wreck verisimilitude for me. I think a mix of pratically dressed and alluringly dressed characters is a more genuine reflection of the genre. I also think it's important to strike a more even gender balance when it comes to these...

5e versions of... Dungeon Delve (4e) NPC Codex (Pathfinder) ...would give me a nearly complete 5e DM's toolkit (and cover a lot of your wants).

I'm confused as well. I'm not in a PF campaign at the moment, so I'm not following as closely as I would if I was. I thought this book was partly about class balance, but mainly about gameplay options for streamlining and accelerating play. This sounds like an addtional layer of complexity...

Elf, Half-Elf, Human, Dwarf, Tiefling That said, these particular players are playing towards backstory and concept more than optimization. 5e is challenging my expectations regarding this. Changes to OA and less marking/controller emphasis is making the rear row a lot less safe than it has...

Just use Parks and Rec quotes about The Cones of Dunshire. Your players won't know any better. ;)

Read the "quick build" section hoping it would give some insight into the core flavor of the class. It suggests Eldritch Blast, Chill Touch, Ray of Sickness, and Witch Bolt. My honest first reaction when I read the quick build was "WTF is Witch Bolt?". Turns out it is a concentration sustained...

It looks like you've got it worked out now, but I wanted to throw in a thought... Barbarian doesn't work this way, but even if a character was prescient of all surprise attacks that were about to occur to any creature in a certain range, is that a problem? Would a psychic warrior or similar...

This is pretty cool. I'm going to think about using a modified version that isn't quite as kind, just to address instant kills. it would work like this: instant kill damage results in a lingering injury and they start making death saves instead of being outright dead.

These are all points I agree with. Adv/disadv I think plays a big part in the speed of play and doesn't get enough credit. Backgrounds are a great way to add variety to the characters. One of the issues in 3e was skill gods. Each skill would have a superstar and a bunch of chumps at it, and...