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Characters get xp, not players. If a player misses a session but the character is still in play, it gets xp as normal. But if the character misses an adventure because it's back home looking after its political affairs (and the player has brought in a temporary replacement) then the...

If the bolded is to be consistent with itself across the entirety of the fiction then those minion Ogres have one hit point no matter what they do or who they fight, meaning one of them could be taken out by a determined kitten with sharp claws and easily one-shotted by any of its buddies during...

OK, then, how else do you explain, preferably in a not-too-gamist manner, the monster-construction mechanics that say Bob the Ogre has one hit point when he fights a high-level party but has considerably more than one hit point when he fights his buddy Joe the Other Ogre?

How are character and-or player turnover in a long-term campaign handled in such a set-up? Do retired (or temporarily dead) characters level up even though they're not adventuring? If yes, on what justification other than pure gamism? What about characters who, in the fiction, go above and...

If cinematics happen, they happen, but I'm not going to try to force them. Persuasion can be, and I include offer of paid employment under "bribe". I long ago ruled that a corpse can't obfuscate or lie when hit with Speak With Dead, as such actions require the corpse to be able to think for...

"Not that type of game" in that PCs don't do (or are prevented from doing) any pre-scouting or info-gathering before wading in to a situation? One would hope, yes. IME if they want that sort of info it's almost inevitable that they'll pick off and capture a straggler, then question it via...

If their presence makes sense given the surrounding fiction, I've got no problem with this. But if the PCs have reason to believe there's only five plus the captain on board, having an extra five come up from below-decks doesn't make sense; even less so if their presence would have been...

We're not talking May 5th to June 5th, though; we're talking May 5th at 2:43 p.m. he has five thugs when the combat starts and at 2:44 p.m. somehow there's ten thugs dead on the deck.

If you're running a level-appropriate canned module, do you run the combats as written or do you tweak them on the fly? Why, though? If one side or the other is getting hammered then so be it - just let it happen. You could run the same tough combat ten times and get ten very different...

When done on the fly, I don't like the idea of adjustments. When done in advance, e.g. beefing up or toning down a canned module intended for level X when the party is level X+6 or X-6, I think it's fine - no different really than if I was writing the adventure from scratch, other than less...

Not by me, you're not, for any of the above. The encounter is the encounter, and for better or worse the chips fall where they may.

Not the case here, unless one also DMs. Many of our forever players have either never read the DMG and MM or, if they did, it was 40 years ago.

I did just this once, and it was the funniest thing ever. 9th-10th-ish level party are in a forest, on high alert for legitimate danger, and out from behind a tree steps a single Kobold that levels its little crossbow at the party and squeaks "Stand and deliver!". Panic stations! One PC dives...

"Other" - all of the above, with one exception: straight hit point damage is boring. Affliction effects should be highly variable, depending on their source and specifics. I also maintain they should be curable, at cost of some resources and with success not guaranteed. Missing from the list...

It's not official, but nothing stops you from adding "Returning" to any magical thrown weapon as a property.

Sure - he attacks with the mace when he doesn't want to risk burning charges out of the Staff of Striking. What's not shown, and yet is I think part of the rules, is any ability to parry with the staff in rounds he's attacking with the mace.

Thing is, in older-edition D&D there's a whole pile of rules the players never see, and aren't expected to. Combat and save matrices. Magic item lists and write-ups. Monster stats and write-ups. All sorts of less-frequently-used charts and tables. Etc. Here, of course, it's on the DM to...

No. But if two rounds into what you'd hoped would be an epic battle all four thugs are down and the captain is sinking fast, having three more thugs show up "just because" is most definitely spawning-in (and, IMO, poor form).

Perhaps. To me this is just as bad as fudging in the players' favour. If they get their unexpectedly-easy kill, why not just let 'em keep it? Hell, if nothing else it makes up for when by sheer good luck you squashed some poor PC last combat. :) Flip side is realizing after the fact that...

My point wasn't intended to be specifically gamist, or any other -ist for all that. I do, however, insist on mechanical symmetry between PCs and NPCs; and I very strongly suspect players would howl if I took away crits and fumbles. Therefore those things stay in, and therefore NPCs and foes...