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WotC have gone backwards and forwards a few times over the years in their attitudes to licensed content, both open licences like the OGL and closed ones like those Paizo used for the magazines. At the time 4e was in production, the anti-license faction was in the ascendancy, and so they pulled a...

I agree. We switched to online play during the pandemic, and it worked a lot better than I'd expected. But it's a very different experience from face-to-face, and the latter is preferable (for me).

IMO, the Essentials Kit is better than the first Starter Set in every respect except for the adventure. And it's better than the new Starter Set in every respect. My recommendation, if you have to pick one, is to get the first Starter Set if you can. Better still, get that and Essentials - the...

Indeed. Agreed. On the other hand, though, the published adventures are also "mass market" outputs. So to an extent it does seem odd that the DMG guidelines don't match the way the designers design.

Yeah, WotC (and TSR before them) have never used the DMG "rules" when building their adventures. What might be good would be if, when they were doing a new edition (and especially a mid-edition update like 3.5e, Essentials, or 5e 2024), they took the rules that they actually used and put those...

Sort of. It once randomly came up as a topic at a work night out, with a couple of colleagues expressing some interest. That very quickly turned into a debate over who in the office was most likely to be interested, which was how I became involved. :) That then turned into the game group that...

It's funny - for me it was the painting that was the whole attraction. Sadly, I found my free time to paint wasn't sufficient for the number of minis I wanted, and having a huge stack unpainted was a burden. So after my last defeat of the grey tide I swore off buying any new ones. But painted...

I'm surprised, and also delighted, that this Kickstarter fulfilled so quickly. But, alas, I have no idea when I'm likely to find any time to read the thing. :(

A few years ago I ran a Ravenloft campaign, in which the equivalent were "Stitched", because they were literally stitched together. And like the Phage from ST:Voyager, some of their number harvested body parts to replace failing ones, in a bid to approximate immortality.

Even then, if the licensing agreement demands it be removed, fan anger may not be able to do anything useful.

I don't think precedent is a helpful guide here - it will vary on a case-by-case basis depending on what each individual license says. Sounds like the R&M license allowed them to keep the materials active; the LotR one may or may not do the same. (And, perhaps crucially, none of the parties...

That's exactly what happened to me with some WotC PDFs I bought from the Paizo store, only to lose as the rights were pulled at short notice. I learned my lesson from that one: as soon as any PDF is bought it is immediately downloaded and backed up.

I've recently finished up the final campaign with my current group (we lost a player which meant we found it really hard to reach a quorum, and had no luck recruiting), and I'm afraid I have neither the time nor really the inclination to start over again with a new group. Which means I'm done...

It was an "and" statement. Find me someone who can do both those things. That was my point. Those rates of healing mean that even 1st level characters are strictly superhuman. And since my adventures unabashedly accept that fact as part of the game, no real human could survive those...

No, but they can be beaten into unconsciousness, spend a night sleeping it off, and be entirely healthy the next day. Indeed. That was my point - those rates of healing mean that even 1st level characters are strictly superhuman. And since my adventures unabashedly accept that fact as part of...

Show me a human who can survive multiple life-or-death battles with edged weapons in a single day, have one night's sleep, and regardless of whatever wounds they took the previous day they are restored to full health.

Absolutely not. Even at 1st level, 5e D&D characters are strictly superhuman, so barring truly absurd luck a normal human would very quickly be dead.

I give XP for a few different things: Each time the party complete an encounter (regardless of difficulty) they get a fixed award (the amount depends on their level). Partial completion gives a half award, and they can claim the second half if they then loop back to "finish the job". Completing...

I'm afraid my opinion of it has gotten much worse over the years, and only degrades with time. Unfortunately, my experience is that a great many of these books have been historically marketed as "must have" and yet actually using them actively makes the game worse.

To be honest, I've always found the release of new core rulebooks (whether labelled as a new edition or not) to be a very useful break point - a chance to jettison all the accumulated cruft from the various expansions and reset back to factory settings.