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Alignment as a restrictive rule that one must obey (as originally conceived) is borked. It was the GM's job to police your behavior, penalize you for playing out of character, and, honestly, the whole system was more than a little evocative of some racist genetic determinism nonsense. Alignment...

Edit to add: Historical accuracy has never been a significant part of fantasy, nor should it be. Something not being medieval-accurate doesn't suddenly make it skip genres out of fantasy. It's still fantasy. Fantasy is about modern people, not about historical accuracy.

I wanted to start with this because you are in for an absolute treat. Each of the descriptions of the cultures in that book has a good focus on food to make the civilization come alive. The first adventure is entirely ABOUT a conflict at a food market. It made my group hungry more than once just...

The OSR scene has some of the older editions covered OK, so that feels less urgent, but it would be nice to kind of officially embrace the "no wrong way to play D&D!" philosophy and officially put out CC. Especially because to be in the OSR scene you already need to be pretty high on the...

Man, the part I was most excited about was older editions (2e, 1e) and 4e hitting CC. Especially 4e, since it's such a unique beast and it has such an ardent group of fans, I'd expect there to be a lot of interest there.

There's a sort of nihilism death spiral that can take over on this path. "Everything is made up and the lore don't matter!" Well, sure, but then there's no reason to invest in it, attach to it, no reason to elevate it, no reason to do better, endless excuses for phoning it in and messing with...

The concept art for Fizban's is more clear with the backwards orientation. I think the slight ambiguity of the Fizban's official art is why Palmer mentioned "leaning into it." Palmer's art is undeniably back-winged, much like this concept art. Very much, "If this is the design guidance I'm...

So much depends on the context and execution. Like, the "good" ending of FFX-2 was pretty well done, but so much of both that game and the one before it were about dealing with grief and loss that it felt kind of cheap, like a forced happy ending. And, "Somehow, Palpatine returned" is a meme...

This isn't a new design. I don't think any of them are -- these are all 5e designs that date from Fizban's. It's just new artwork with the same design. Pushing into the controversy to tackle the wings and try and make sense of them might be the best solution here for Palmer. Here's the topaz...

Some of these are very DIFFERENT effects! I would not use the same system for Disease that I'd use for Energy Drain, for instance. I like 4e's system for diseases, but it is a lot to track and it's not a small lift to "design" a disease in it. I do think that the rolls against disease should...

I'm still seeing more solutions upstream. Like, what you want is a guaranteed cinematic moment, and you're using a system that can leave a boss with 4 hp (hp is not a very cinematic mechanic!) and also can have low roll boring attacks in it. The "fudge" is happening because the ruleset isn't...

Yeah, in the same way as if I have a +1 weapon, I'm more powerful than the rest of my party if the rest of my party doesn't have it. Of course, the D&D solution here is to make sure magic items are fairly plentiful and easy to hand out. NPC buddies should also be fairly plentiful and easy to...

If I adhere to the rule of "don't roll dice when it doesn't matter," I am not even running that last round of combat. There's no risk, there's no uncertainty, there's no tension, this is just procedural. No one cares about the last straggler. The feeling's already there. If the combat system...

Watered-down "dragons" don't fulfill the fantasy, either. I keep coming back to magic items because the fantasy is very similar - the companion is a (reasonably) reliable part of my kit that just makes be better than I would be without it. I don't have to be a weaker Fighter to have a...

Not really what I'm talking about. Those spells serve their purpose, but they are not the same fantasy as "I am friends with a dragon who fights alongside me and my party."

I really wish the advice on having monster friends adventure alongside the party was better (or, y'know, extant). Riding dragons and griffons and dinosaurs, befriending unicorns, fighting alongside celestials, dealing with fiends, even recruiting guards and knights and veterans and spies...you...