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I dunno, the dire flail and the double sword are giving me conniptions. I am impressed by the variety of picks and hammers with pick-ends, though.

Why not just ban them from using darts? Back in my day, wizards could only use daggers and staves. And we were happier, too! Yup. But they're mangled, and the procedures that hold them together are gone. This is why I think procedure is important. Consider two scenarios, in which the party...

Time pressure (or consequences in general) is a big thing, so let's stick with that. The DMG says that a party can move 300 ft. per minute at a normal exploration pace, or 200 at a slow one. In the 60 minutes before I roll and random encounter check, they will have been, looted, and gone home...

If you met me on the street and told me that my shirt was ugly, I'd be annoyed. If I met you on a fashion discussion forum and you told me my shirt was ugly, I'd have to wonder whether you had a point. I don't think I've said that people have to use rules from older editions. I also don't think...

I think you can have your cake and eat it by having lasting effects that are a long-term problem but not a short-term one. So, maybe the fighter can have a big heap of HP and doesn't suffer for losing them, but recovery takes a long time or involves some other difficulty.

I won't stop mixing metaphors, and no-one can make me! I will try and avoid inflammatory language. For me, the issue is: what happens after nothing happens? As DM, what do I do next? Personally, a rigid 'something bad must happen now' rule can feel contrived, but it does have the virtue of...

Oh my God, this is going to be a lot! Please bear with me and my many pedantic responses. First up, @Oofta and others, I don't know how you play, and I'm not judging your games. I freely insult 5e as a text, because I don't think the text informs your play as much as you might. Any rancour is...

You know, I think I need to do a better job of explaining why procedures are important, and how they relate to framing and player choices. This (way, way too long) post is me trying to clarify a couple of things before taking a break from this thread for a while (I've got to actually do some...

I don't think you can call failing to support any playstyle 'supporting every playstyle'. That's the whole contention of this pile of pages. Also, 5e in particular sabotages a lot of playstyles, like wilderness adventuring, with the abundant magic and other abilities characters have access to...

There are dozens of us! Dozens! Also, I love your shapeshifter class. In proper D&D tradition, I will call it an Odo. I wasn't suggesting that they needed to include boat fighting rules in the base game (maybe in Spelljammer, though?). I think you've hit upon an important question, though...

Instead of responding to a bunch of stuff in pedantic detail, I'd like to try and clarify something. When I mention 'structures' or 'procedures', I'm thinking about recurrent processes that 'loop'. Play loops, right? So, yes, I as a DM need to make a call about how long it takes for fire to...

Maybe? If you pick stats first, you're limiting your class options down the road. And, stats could start at 10 and develop later based on your class training or whatever.

That's a really cool idea. Do you choose stats first, or generate them when you pick a class?

This is really useful! I think, for me, 5e fails hard at (2) and (4), whereas I think Basic is pretty good but sometimes misses me on (1), (3), and (4). Link is here, for reference. I think 'scene framing' as a particular thing might be leading us astray. The bigger questions are stuff like...

I wouldn't say 'no choice' exactly, since the better options are expensive, and some characters, like melee rangers, might want both protection and stealth, but I take your point.

Serious question: how often does the thematic background (which I also like!) come up in play? Unfortunately, my experience is that most players kind of forget about their backgrounds, or at least don't find ways of making them relevant to what is actually happening in play. With the new...

I... I was going to disagree with you, vehemently, but maybe that is how WotC and a lot of players see it. I don't think this is true. The OD&D rules summary in that Alexandrian link I posted above are very strict about moving through a dungeon and describing what's in it. The DM can't just...

First bit was re: 'hardness' of scene framing. Second was the lack of travel procedures. Sorry if it seems like I'm being a pedant here, but there are some details I want to get across. So, for scene framing, during a game, maybe I just say 'hey, Brian, the morning after the party, you wake up...

I guess I'd rather have no choice than the illusion of choice. But, a little more depth would be nice.

I think its a good idea to condense the armours, since they were fairly redundant and the flavour was kind of weird anyway. I would probably keep a gold-plated and/or cumbersome version in each category (e.g. heavy plate) to give people something to work towards, but w/e. OTOH, once you start...