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Simple XP system: You start out with 0 XP. When you complete an encounter or a quest goal, you get 1, 2, or 3 XP, based on the difficulty or importance of the achievement. When you have 10 XP, you gain a level, and your XP total resets to 0.

As a DM who wants to implement a rule like that: Why's that absurd? It makes perfect sense to me. Surround your enemies, and avoid getting surrounded. Isn't that a fair description of basic combat tactics? Well, if you're the type of DM who likes to play on a grid, that's the whole point of...

I think that if the spellcaster runs out of resources before anyone else does, that player failed pretty hard at resource management. It seems very selfish for that player to use all his limited-use toys, then refuse to keep playing for the rest of the adventure. That's why you're supposed to...

I'm also implementing a "week in town" long rest... But "a week in town" is the long rest for everybody. It's not like the adventure continues while you're sleeping in the normal rules. You go back to town, the DM says "you rest for a week," and you get all your stuff back. What's the problem...

Sure, but that just creates a huge divide between groups with and without a cleric. A cleric-less group can't have the same kinds of adventures that a group with a cleric can. If an adventure is challenging for a party with a cleric, a party without a cleric doesn't stand a chance. Someone has...

Even in old-style D&D, in practice, it only takes 2 days at most (the cleric casts all of his healing spells, rest for the cleric to get his spells back and heal everyone to full, then rest again for the cleric to get his spells back again). However, I think you'll find what you're looking for...

I'll do Fighter and Wizard if you do Rogue and Cleric.

OK, so I'm running D&D or whatever. Here's what I bring to the table: I'm running an adventure out of a book, so I naturally need that book at the table. I need the Monster Manual too, since the adventure doesn't come with basic monster stats. I also want the Dungeon Master's Guide in case I...

DMG p. 120-121. "If the adventurers detect a trap before triggering it, they might be able to disarm it." The rule of thumb: If they fail by 5 or more, the hazard is triggered. I thought this was in the books, but I can't find it now.

Stealth vs. Perception. Deception vs. Insight. Stealth vs. Perception. Surprise! (As always, DM can bypass the die roll if it's obvious)

I ran Firestorm Peak in 5e. Mechanically, it worked fine. You just have to do some advance work parsing some of the complicated stuff. In terms of play value, it was not worth it. It felt like we spent weeks on 10 rooms in a row of "fight a bunch of duergar and maybe some spiders."

What I really want is a collection of concise location-based adventures that I can drop into my campaign without having to read them first. Example: http://burnedfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Greg-Gillespie-_-The-Bastion-of-the-Boglings.pdf P.S.: Emphasis on CONCISE. No Ed Greenwoods...

As someone who started DMing 4e as a total newbie (and then didn't DM again until the D&D Next playtest), I strongly disagree. Encounter balance has nothing to do with it; we didn't even understand the 3 types of actions, 3 types of powers, 4 defenses, healing surges, second winds, action...

I've only played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I know those games would have been massively better if they didn't use the D&D rules as literally as they did. Without a DM to enforce consequences, everything came down to nova-rest-nova-rest. Spellcasters were annoying and overpowered, fighters were...

Even if you only care about the TRPG, the takeaways from this panel are: The TRPG is designed with the assumption that the players/DMs don't have a ton of free time to spend on it They don't care about being the best selling TRPG, because that's such a small slice of their pie. So they don't...

So are you saying the D&D designers shouldn't even try to make the game quicker, easier, smoother, etc.? Do you not think that is a good goal for the game?

House rule: Permanency A spellcaster can make a spell permanent by making a grave personal sacrifice. The fickle hand of fate (the DM) determines how much is appropriate; for example, a permanent disguise self might require sacrificing 1 point of Charisma, while a permanent mage hand might...

Hill dwarves live on hills, and eat food that grows on hills. Mountain dwarves live on mountains, and eat food that grows on mountains. Deep dwarves (duergar) live underground, and eat adventurers.

No, but it seems like a perfectly sensible house rule.

The best resources are the 5e core books. You can't go too wrong with just running old adventures as written (5 orcs over here, 1 ogre over there, etc.), just using the 5e monster stats. I have found this to result in much easier encounters, though. My advice is to do the math for encounter...