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With everything I’ve been seeing so far, I’m really torn between embracing the new rules or go back to play a PHB-only 2014 campaign. The new rules are cool but the latter is starting to have a very appealing simplicity…

By curiosity, how do you feel about warlock and sorcerer (and to a lesser extent, paladin, cleric, and wizard)?

[edit] nevermind, not important...

I'm not much into the old-school play or the revival movement but to be fair, even when we were playing TSR's AD&D back then, we were not playing it "old-school" either (in other words, we were not playing by the modern definition of old-school)

Warrior-wizards are pretty common in (fantasy) littérature and media; I’m not surprised the concept is popular with players. I mean, one of my earliest hero was Luke Skywalker. So I’ve been wanting to play a gish since I was four.

Flat and boring railroads are flat and boring. Thrilling rollercoaster rides can be fun, especially one-shots/short campaigns. Railroading can be awful but but in the spirit of a plus thread, there can be a lot of positive too. Railroads allow the DM to have each location very detailed and well...

The One Ring rpg, especially 2e, is one of the most asymmetrical systems I know. I like player/GM asymmetry but TOR2 goes just a bit too far IMO. I preferred 1e in that regards. Otherwise older editions or D&D (read pre-3e) were very asymmetrical in the complexity of classes. Mage was much more...

I keep hearing the term “bruiser” to designate heavy hitters. Personally I don’t like it much, but Im not a big fan of “tank” either.

A master and their apprentice is a common trope in fiction, and what is common in fiction, we often try do recreate in RPG. The new Star Wars show reignited this desire of mine to make the master/apprentice dynamic work in a TTRPG game. By definition, a master has more experience than an...

I often fall back on the exhaustion track to simulate deteriorating conditions in my houserules. They’re conveniently built in the system and the penalties stack in a not-too-punishing death-spiral. By RAW they’re a bit too hard to get rid of if exhaustion levels are to be handed out more...

I think what bugs me is that of those 50% who survived the 50-foot fall IRL, I bet that not many were fully capable of functioning unimpeded immediately after. I'm sure there's a bunch of cases where the person got up and walked home with nothing but a bruise, but these are probably...

There's so much to unpack just in that little bit of a sentence here...

But the thing is, they didn’t fall into the lava. They made sure they wouldn’t because that would be game over. The audience wouldn’t accept obi-wan falling neck-deep in the lava river and climbing back up, brushing the slag off his shoulder with the back of his hand, only to keep fighting...

That’s what I tend to do. The most extreme the situation, the more « creative » I tend to be in my description as a DM. However for many players, the description doesn’t match the consequence. Me: the dragon throws you in the lava, you take 10d10 as you hopscotch your way back on solid slag /...

I’ll give this a go too. I’ll try to keep it brief… Started by playing live-action roleplaying games (larp). Then my friends invited me to this tabletop game that was like a larp but without the « live action » part of larp. Turned out to be (A)D&D, with 2E fresh out the presses. I played at...

Yes, most of the « but this shatters my suspension of disbelief!!! » situations happen past level 5 when characters have a comfy cushion of hp

I disagree; things don't need to be realistic to help our brain making enough sense of a situation to keep voluntary suspension of disbelief. When i get close to a very hot fire, I can resist better if i shield my face with my hand. a bigger shield protects me from more heat. That I know...

That is where I disagree though. You can say you raised your shield. You can say you buried your face in your elbow. Heck, you can even say you just turned you back to the breath. Whether this is realistic is mostly irrelevant; you brought a narrative element to help make sense to the situation...

Agreed on the last part. I still believe we have less narrative tools for survival of extreme events, but they are there. I’d even say that the more extreme the event, the more they become important.

In most cases, we can easily imagine a way to protect ourselves from attacks, whether it’s a dodge or blocking or somehow shielding yourself from damage. Part of that is based on our real-life experience, part of it from stories/movies. It’s a lot harder to imagine protecting yourself from lava...