I am not sure that it is useful or appropriate to leverage moral judgements over something so ultimately trivial, especially on this board where arguing about sensitive topics is largely verboten.
But, you know, you do you.
I am very happy with FGU as a desktop tool. But I have run into real people in the real world that would not use it because you have to load it like a program, rather than run it through a browser. My point was simply that reducing price is not the only barrier.
It feels weird that people seem happy about this. I have a couple, mostly gifts from people who know I am a nerd but don't really get what kind of nerd, but they seem harmless enough.
I have a friend who runs a game club in his school, and he says that it is very common for the players to use Beyond while the GM still runs from books. I wonder how typical that is.
That is an interesting distinction. I do try and use a lot of "What now?" and "What do you do?" prompts, but I also let the players noodle about. I should try asking for more declarative statements.
That is a big probelm at con games. Even when my pregens have full explanations of all abilities...
I won't deny your experience, so I guess all i can say is that you must have had the players on board with making a real effort to get through as much as possible in the single session.
Did that make it more fun? Are hyper-focused players better to GM? I mean, as opposed to players that are...
Emphasis mine.
I have run a lot of 4 hour convention games of 5E. There is no way you would get through 8 encounters plus exploration in that time. Literally impossible.
As an aside: I just tried to generate a high CR treasure for my regular game (the PCs have found a treasure hoard meant as part of a ritual to draw Tiamat into the Prime) and boy is that a massive PITA. As usual, the weird organization decisions in the DMG makes it harder than it should be, and...