Search results

Yes, and only if used in a non-sexual context (i.e. “f- you!”). I have starter set (digital version). It’s tamer than ST, for sure, which actually makes it feel a bit cringier.

I don’t get dungeon crawls, narratively, in the sense of characters taking long rests. Not unless the dungeon is truly vast, like the Underdark, but then it’s really the same as wilderness adventuring. But if it’s a contained environment a long rest isn’t possible because the inhabitants will...

I’m always skeptical of arguments that begin by handwaving inconvenient evidence. For example, and we see this a lot, that 5e is immensely popular despite being bad due to: Covid/Critical Role/Stranger Things/Luck/people not knowing any better/etc. Maybe it’s popular because most folks playing...

The plot of Interstellar annoys me, as well. Yes, it’s relevant to today in obvious ways, but it is also sentimental and dumb, offering no useful insights. But it’s almost worth it for the visuals alone. Nolan is an extremely skilled director, and does wonders with the right script. He’s hit...

I think I’m out. I’m struggling to get to the end of the episode and finding it very monotonous: one hushed conversation after another conveying a ton of information about stuff that I’m finding it hard to engage with. Plus, my spouse, who is generally benignly indifferent to me listening to CR...

Using DDB pretty much eliminates this problem. I just toggle on what I want available and toggle off the rest. Letting players use whatever 3PP they can find sounds like it could be a lot of work (not for most of my players because they could care less about the rules and just rely on me to know...

This is a film that I simultaneously look forward to and dread. It's gonna be a heavy one - it basically has to be.

I'm curious how you got from "I hate it" to "it really hasn't made a noticeable difference" to "has worked out well on the rare occasion it comes up." It felt like quite a journey!

I allowed healing potions for personal use as a bonus action long before 2024. My reasoning was that healing potions are weak and it's usually not a fun turn or particularly useful, so sacrificing the entire action for it was basically never worth it. Whereas a little top-off for a bonus action...

So much this. Though I would go further and say that not only is blame not constructive, it’s usually the opposite. The need to make complicated problems into moral or ideological conflicts with heroes we can praise and villains we can blame often prevents us from solving the problem itself.

I don't think you understand what people are describing as prep. I view my role as "playing the world." If I am ad-libbing, it really is the me, the DM, running the show, just in an impromptu way. The narrative belongs entirely to me. But when I prep a location so that I know what different...

It is not. Did you not read the rest of what I wrote? Because I don't see how you could read what I wrote about players making unexpected choices and needing to have contingencies prepared and get "linear." When I prep a ton of potential encounters and story hooks for a town, as I am doing right...

A few spellcasters get wish, at levels where a vanishly small percentage of games are played. Well, there is a small but vocal contigent on this forum who make that demand. A lot. Then there are a lot of folks who seem pretty satisfied with how martials play. From WotC's perspective, they...

This sounds like a hard class to balance - your examples are of extraordinarily powerful, primarily solo characters. As to whether there is room...that's subjective. As I posted above, adding more complexity to the rules is a cost, and is something that a lot of players don't want (I'm among...

This is fair. I just make the wheelchairs magic. Basically, the same way the X-Men writers started treating Prof. X's wheelchair. It's a handwave solution that gets the job done. And when they players want more verisimilitude, they add it.

One thing that I have been thinking about is whether and how the widespread adoption of DnDBeYond affects WotC's decision making in all things, but especially on adding more stuff to the game. Thanks to DDB, they have a lot of data on class and subclass popularity (every now and then, they...

I agree, and this is basically the format of the Heroes of the Borderlands adventure. To me, a dungeon-type environment is a valuable resource for its inhabitants, and they are going to use that space, so all of it should be meaningful.

I plan a ton because I don't want the players to feel railroaded. So that makes me feel like I need to have a ton of contingencies in place, and it also means that I prep a lot of material that never gets used, or gets used years later, often in a different campaign. For some games, the players...

How many words is a typical game's worth of planning? Factoring in the prep materials specifically for the game and then averaging out the preliminary materials for that part of the world (gazetteer info, basically), I probably average 3-4k words per session. My last campaign arc was ten games...

5e was coming off the heels of 4e, which was much more of a tactical combat game, and I think some of that expectation was still baked in. But instead we got the rise of actual play shows that emphasize story and RP, where combats are relatively rare and consequential. Plus, 5e is not that great...