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Love of (and time investment in mastering) 2014 5e is the fundamental reason I despise 2024 5e. While I generally like exploring new game systems, learning 2024 was just a miserable slog because it really does almost nothing new while making enough (often seemingly arbitrary) changes to force a...

So I just rewatched the recent Superman movie, and this time around noticed even more how consistently they follow up nearly every bit of violence with little verbal or visual asides establishing that everyone is okay. It was clearly a move to differentiate themselves from Man of Steel, and...

Some will be disappointed. Some will just see it as finally getting to take the training wheels off.

Yeah about 20% of participants really not liking the the thing being scored is bound to do that. Just as the 60 odd people who scored it 7-10 boosts the score up. Now one of those side's I agree with and one of them I don't, but I'll respect their statistical impact equally in those broad...

Or raise it. In any case this sort of rating will always call loudest to those who want to evangelize and those who want to complain. And yet most the proponents know it isn't a perfect ten, and even most of us detractors recognize and admit it could have been worse, so it's going to land...

A lot of D&D youtubers went down a clickbait route during the OGL-gate days and got addicted to those quick and easy views. Aside from being annoying, it also feels kind of short-sighted because that crap all ages like milk, whereas quality ttrpg-related content, particularly relatively...

This! I was a pretty happy 5e camper. Then the dark shadow of playtest nonsense began to cloud the horizon. I think the basic issue is that just running these games requires so much thought about game design principles that most people who really get into it become armchair game designers, and...

Well the thing about complicated game systems is they have lots of moving bits and pieces and you don't really confront them all at once, so I've been through the whole curve several times over with different aspects of this edition, and inevitably will again as they reissue random remix...

Well the downside of it being a group activity is this is a pizza where everyone at the table has to come to a consensus on toppings, and sadly I'm stuck learning and playing a system I didn't want or ask for at some tables, while still needing to remember the nearly the same but different one...

Yep, 5e was absolutely due for some sort of revised rules compendium from the moment Tasha's hit. I mean suddenly if I wanted my character to have all the core class features they were "entitled" to I was hauling a minimum two books to sessions as a player. And the PHB was full of little things...

2014 was somehow unusable because your character might have to make an ability check, but 2024 where the target always gets a saving throw is somehow more "usable"? I mean I guess that makes sense on the "I sometimes feel bad as a DM just auto-killing one of a low level PCs few spells for the...

I mean some people absolutely hated Counterspell, so I guess a nerfed to near pointlessness version seems like an improvement to them. The main lesson I got from the 2024 experience was realizing that the majority of things WotC and their boosters seem to have considered bugs in 2014 5e were...

In a vacuum I might give it a 7 or an 8. I love Fifth Edition Classic, and New 5e is just a version of it which set out to be a little more needlessly complicated, a little less simulationist, a little less license to make it one's own, and a fair amount more homogeneous, all things I dislike...

I think rolling the hit die and subtracting it from an enemy saving throw that just succeeded would be the most fun, and about the only thing that would regularly be worth pursuing the path of blood magic over (other than just to be edgy). It might need to be coupled with proportional hit point...

NPC stat blocks are definitely a place where New 5e doubled down on tendencies I disliked in Fifth Edition Classic. It's not exactly a big thing, but if I'm redesigning or using 3rd party content for practically every NPC I'm a step closer to just playing a different game. Really I'm just...

Well free is a very good price. I have the old edition. I've never actually played it, but I've found it a good resource for game design ideas.

The one time I set out to create a homebase option, a run down former "adventurer's guild" in a city that the party could clear the giant spiders out of and adopt through several possible avenues, they took no interest in it and instead set up in a mysterious abandoned wizard's tower, which had...

I'll start campaigns intended to be short at whatever level is appropriate to the sort of threats the characters are facing. If it's going to be a "grand campaign" I usually want to start at level 1. Though even then if players had character concepts that required a little multiclassing to...

I swore a pact to serve a magic sword. No, not this magic sword I'm holding, a better, cooler magic sword that teaches me magic spells it can't cast itself. It picked me because I'm so charismatic, while also being a misunderstood loner. Or at least it will when I reach 3rd level.

They are separate classes because, even if we consider their core themes not that different for argument's sake, they all lend themselves to a large number of subclasses based on their core thematic concept, which is important in the 5e class structure. Wizards get themed around schools or...