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I mean, are you assuming that there is a majority of players who have a metaphorical gun-to-their-head and are being forced to play 5.5 against their will? I don't believe that. First, I think the buy in level for 5.5 is far greater than the number of people who frequent Enworld or Reddit or...

Yes, I picked an intentional hyperbolic, no middle ground example so we wouldn't bog down the example with attempting to square the circle on it. I didn't want people to focus on solving the example and miss the point.

But at a certain point, you have to decide which fans are the priority. Let's take a purely hyperbolic example for the sake of simplicity. Let's say there is a certain demographic of D&D players who want D&D to keep the classic downwards AC/Thac0 system that existed in D&D since inception...

I know, I've seen some of it. But I don't have the same enthusiasm for it like I did before.. Andor was great. I even liked Asoka despite not being a devoted Rebels guy, but I'm perfectly fine playing wait and see now and what little memorabilia I bother with is purely nostalgic stuff. I don't...

So like talking to the monsters to avoid fighting them was part of that? Which means that the "talking to monsters instead of killing them" is a part of OS play and not something teens invented yesterday? Just being clear on that.

You telling me all those OSR people who tell me the adventure wasn't about killing everything in sight were lying?!?

As any OS player will tell you, the goal of D&D is to circumvent encounters in order to attain gold while using as little resources as possible. Part of smart play was to talk to monsters rather than fight them (as combat is a fail state) usually under the guise of tricking, bribing or hiring...

Here's the thing about fandom. You either go with it or you bow out. I was a huge Star Wars fan but the sequel trilogy left a bitter enough taste in my mouth that when it was said and done, I had less interest in following the new projects with the gusto I had a decade ago. I accept that the new...

Sorry, was referring to the Reddit group.

This is a circlejerk post, right?

Something like this?

Having just wrapped up a Ravenloft game, I can say I had plenty of them. I got the classics (vampire, werewolf, golem) but VRGR has some other great ones. My two favorite were the Dullahan (because being chased by the headless horseman is always fun) and the relentless slasher (which is great if...

The original monster gnomes were just shorter dwarves. I guess somewhere between then and AD&D gnomes kept the magical resistance common to the short races but also gained illusion magic because illusions were not really magic, idk. D&D and inconsistent lore have been together since the very...

The RC is probably the closest D&D ever got into cramming the whole game into one book. Seven classes, 36 levels, spells, magic items, the whole bestiary, weapon mastery and skills, the core rules, domain rules, a mass combat system, even info on gaining immortality, topped off with a mini...

There is also a really good summary of Mystara and the Hollow World in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

I'm not a purist and if you already own the AD&D monster compendium, I prefer the Karameikos box set. It really does try to explain setting for Basic using AD&D terminology. Then work backwards into the Gazetteers when you get a feel for it.

The Essentials Kit did that: it let you build simple characters and gave them six levels of stuff to do. What I've didn't do was hold your hand on learning to play. Ideally though, it was a good intermediate product between the starter and full PHB.

Maybe true of the OT, but we were playing the prequels. And it was an absolute poor fit because Jedi ARE big damn heroes. We wanted fights like the Duel of the Fates and ended up with a lot of characters downed quickly rather than long, cinematic combats.

Saga. The condition track quickly made each fight spiral. Though my group was used to Revised, where a single crit is death, so maybe there was some PTSD involved from that.