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For myself, I know that a lot of the PC's I create often come with the basic idea of a quest. I gravitate towards religious characters a lot - clerics, druids, paladins, that sort of thing - so, it isn't much of a leap at all. My character is searching for a relic or something of importance...

Unfortunately, real life stepped on the neck of this particular campaign before it gained much legs. It was actually a heck of a lot of fun being the one character with a fairly normal, mundane background but was a real jerk, in this group of broken, horrifically scarred individuals who were...

Unless you think every single soldier in existence comes from a tragic home situation, I don't think that tragic backstory is really much needed for an adventurer. Again, I would point to the rather extensive number of super heroes who actually have two parents and come from loving families...

Kinda, sorta, but, there are all sorts of reasons. My Dragonborn Paladin that I mentioned, got religion and really hated dragons (I made him a paladin of Gilgeam). Sure, he had a fantastic home life, but, the call to adventure sounded and off he went.

I think this is probably the biggest reason right here. Players, having been burned in the past, make characters that are Teflon. Nothing sticks. They are from far away, have zero ties, no family, no connections to the setting at all generally. Father Generic the Cleric, or, the PC with No...

Heck, in my case, Jammy was a dickhead. Happy homelife, but, he was a rebel - drinking, getting into trouble, the whole nine yards. Not evil, but, a troublemaker. AKA being a teenager. :p But, then again, you could take up adventuring to protect your happy family - my Hoard of the...

The funny thing is, there are so many ways to do supply tracking that doesn't require all this fiddly one arrow tracking stuff. There are any number of abstract inventory systems in various RPG's that do it. And it's not like this is a new idea. I think someone mentioned WAAAAAY upthread the...

And, frankly, even the "martials" we have can often cast spells or have spell like abilities. I mean, Barbarians can literally fly. Monks (depending on subclass) have straight up access to spells. Everyone loves a caster apparently. Having a Warlord (whatever name you want to call it, I...

Heh. I have been here so many times. YouTube Viva La Dirt League Competing for the darkest backstory in D&D In the last campaign I got to play in, 3 of the other players all had these horrific backstories. Abuse, substance abuse, torture. You name it. Then you had my halfling monk -...

Meh. Why? No one even tracks components anymore. You have a spell component case and that's the end of the tracking. And, let's be honest, the reason for this is because for the past forty or so years, while every single PHB has listed spell components, unless they were expensive, no one...

How many hunters used a sword? Compared to using a spear? After all, many of the things D&D characters fight are not humanoid. Swords would be my last choice of a weapon vs most non-humanoids. Imagine trying to fight a wyvern with a sword. But, the romance version of swords makes it not...

I never said it was concious or deliberate. It just was. Like you said, the art shows characters with swords. The best magic weapons are swords. Outside of D&D, the image of the knight (or samurai) with a sword dominates the collective conscious. I'm not assigning blame. Who cares about...

You are right.

Now, would you say that what you've done here would be how AD&D was commonly played? That many tables would have systems like this in place? There's a considerable difference between, "Hey, this game that I've been playing non-stop for forty years? Yeah, this is what I came up with" and...

The issue isn't really bowstrings snapping, although that can happen. The larger issue is that if you keep the bow strung for extended periods of time, the bow itself breaks. Or, you weaken the bow and the string stretches. IOW, keeping a wooden bow strung for extended periods of time is a...

Totally agree. Which, if you scroll back a few pages, is exactly what I said that apparently is extremely contentious. 🤷 But, apparently, we're both completely wrong and in home games no one ever used a sword. DM's always changed every single sword in a module to another weapon. I guess...

It was almost always the weapon of last resort. You pulled out a sword after you had exhausted every other option. Never minding that NO ONE EVER hunted with a sword. Sure, swords might be great against other humanoids, but against the very large number of creatures that a PC would face...

Well, that and the fact that by the rules, even by 2014, all the best magic weapons were still swords. You, by RAW, could not have a Dragon Slaying spear. It had to be a sword. That was right in the rules. Same with Defending, flaming, and a bunch of other effects. Now, you're absolutely...

Just to give a little perspective here. I dug out my Encylopedia Magica books - I have all 4. These are the pretty thorough listings of all magic items published up to 1994 (well, probably 1993). They're wonderful books and I love them to pieces. Polearms - as a section- include AFAIK, every...

I know right? It's almost like randomly generated treasure doesn't exist in the game... "Swords are very dominant in D&D." "Nuh uh. A DM can change any sword to any other weapon." "But, that's the point. The initial default is going to be a sword very, very often." "Doesn't matter. The...