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Ideally, yes; if it's a mystery to the character then it should also be a mystery to that character's player. When that increased ability to make informed tactical decisions is coming from info the characters themselves don't have, something really feels off.

This makes a big underlying assumption that IMO and IME needn't always be true: that the PCs are the good guys. Yes it's marketed that way, but so what? I always figured both TSR and WotC marketed the game as featuring heroic good-guy PCs just to keep the real-world moralizers off their backs...

Which makes me ask, then, if it's not necessarily immoral in play why bring it up in the first place? Most (nearly all?) D&D-like game settings bake in highly different and often more-or-less faux-historical morals than those we have or would like to have in today's reality. TSR-era D&D even...

Oh, same here. And while the platform I provided wasn't (and, let's be honest, still isn't) always perfect, it did the job well enough to keep us rocking. And I certainly made some mistakes. Having (I hope) learned from them and carried on, I don't lose any sleep over them now.

And then the rest of the players are left having to meta-play that their characters don't know about the lie or alteration to the info while they as players do. Where's the mystery in that?

"I've had these conversations, now I talk with my battleaxe I've got my alignment, don't confuse me with the facts" - a line from one of our band's songs that somehow seems to fit here.....

Cue the Great Alignment Debate in three... two... one...

Though maybe part of the fun WAS the mistakes and things which resulted from them; and that is what has since been lost.

Yes. It shows, sometimes. :)

If you're giving those who stay behind the scout's intel before the PCs would have it anyway, why bother with the scouting mission? You're also denying the scout's player the agency to not tell the party everything, or to forget stuff, or to otherwise make errors in reporting be they...

Another big required feature, that I don't think anyone's mentioned yet, is that it the bandwidth and tech required to use it be very minimal. Not everyone has the latest tech and-or a fibre-optic internet connection.

Everyone being about to ding to 7th at the same time is already highly unlikely if the game has level enhancing or draining effects and-or not all classes advance at the same rate (which is what I'm used to). That said, RPGA is/was a different type of environment from a home game. I wouldn't...

Voice, but not video. Too glitchy, and the VTT providing maps and tokens etc. is fine. One annoying thing we've found with roll20 is that it won't support any other means of drawing on the map except dragging a mouse around, which is a pain (fingers on a touchscreen is even worse). A VTT that...

The problem with a lot of that is that automating things like To Hit, Damage, and character sheets either forces the VTT into suporting just a limited number of game systems - or even only one - or forces the programmers to have to write bespoke subprograms for every system they want to support...

Meh - sometimes in the game you just gotta kill 'em all and let their gods sort 'em out. :)

If levels are a bit more easy come, easy go, then the character who's a bit behind today might be a bit ahead tomorrow. Why would they fall behind for missing a session? Their character's still there with the party and still doing things, right? Therefore it should get the xp it earns, just...

I'm running H2 right now and it's for 16-18 (I've toned it down a bit for my 8th-11th party), I didn't realize H4 went to 100.

BECMI goes to 100, but does 1e?

In 1e 9th level IS high level. :)

You can, but at least in 3e when we tried this we found it led to an ever-growing raft of other headaches. We did get a 10+-year (431 sessions) campaign out of it but after about 4th level the DM really had to work at it; and even then it collapsed at about 14th. 4e, with its even tighter...