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Yeah, the seeker and runepriest desperately needed more support that they never got. Some of the PHB1 classes were weak as originally created (paladin, star pact warlock, and I'd say wizard), but they eventually got improved through the Power books. As for best pre-Essentials classes, that...

Strength of Thousands is set at a magic school but it's not really Harry Potter -- the PCs are more like grad students than elementary school, and they are expected to become members of the school's faculty after the second adventure. The African-inspired setting is interesting, and there's more...

One of the things I liked most about 4E is that, through feats and powers, they made weapon choice actually matter. Instead of just "this one does d4 piercing, this one does d8 bashing," different weapon types had different applications -- spears and polearms were better for tripping and...

As a 4E fan, I think the biggest problem with Essentials is not the books themselves but how poorly they were marketed. WotC wasn't clear about whether Essentials was meant as a replacement for the original books -- i.e., a "4.5E" -- or whether it was meant as a supplement to the game, and it...

Because after 40+ years of playing D&D and other RPGs, I find magic in most games dull, flavorless, and repetitious. When "magic" means a 100-page list of spells, only a handful of which most players will ever use, I'm going to avoid interacting with that system as much as possible. Also, D&D...

Likewise, ever since 3E I've soured on the idea that everything in the universe with supernatural powers has to express them in terms of the same spell list. Say an angel, a wizard, a dragon sorcerer, a firebending monk, and a fire elemental all cast wall of fire ... and despite the fact they're...

It's not 5E, but there's a 13th Age campaign, Shards of the Broken Sky, that revolves around exploring a crashed flying city.

1979, Holmes Basic.

Warlord: Backseat driver who constantly tells everyone how to play their characters (i.e., what people who don't like the warlord think the warlord actually is).

“Someone once criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous... Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from a blast of red dragon’s breath? Why not? I replied. Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds...

Here's another example that takes race out of the equation. I have run games for deaf players in the past. Frequently, some of them ask, "Can my character be deaf?" They are not asking this because they want to take a disadvantage for extra points, or because they want me to make in-game...

That just makes me think of this:

Pretty much this. This is a situation where us "old white cishet guys" might be better served by just shutting up and listening instead of immediately trying to reframe the situation as about us ("but at my table I..."). The Game Police will not come and stop you if you have brutish, stupid...

A few years ago, I DMed a group through a small dungeon where the first door was trapped. It wasn't even a very severe trap, just something that would knock off a few hit points ... but the party proceeded to treat every single subsequent door in the dungeon like it was an unexploded bomb. Even...

There was an article in The Dragon that had a 1E bard class that was not a sadistic practical joke. We used that on the rare occasions someone wanted to play a bard.

B.A.'s fear of flying doesn't strike me as much of a disadvantage in RPG terms. Was there ever an episode where, for instance, the team couldn't get him on the plane and he stayed home, or arrived late because he insisted on driving instead? If not, are there really any measurable consequences...

People actually used those rules? My group back in the day found them arbitrary and tiresome -- do you really want to have to stop and roll a save for every single piece of gear every time you get hit with a lightning bolt or dragon breath? -- and never bothered with them.

These days, I find it less interesting to play a character who's a platform for magic items. Yeah, it's cool to have a magic sword that can strike someone's head off ... but only if you get very lucky with the dice, and anyone with even a single level of fighter can pick up the same sword and do...

Tenra Bansho Zero has a "reverse death spiral" damage mechanic where you get stronger as you take more damage in a fight. It's only temporary bonuses rather than actual leveling up, though.

The older I get, the less interest I have in the super-timid, poke-everything-with-a-10'-pole style of play -- on both sides of the DM screen. It especially annoys me when this attitude creeps from dungeon crawling into other genres. I've had players in superhero games worry endlessly about...