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  1. Burnside

    D&D General Take A Look At The Class Boards From The New D&D Starter Set

    I'm a little taken aback at the amount of work that seems to have been done to ensure that you don't need...a pencil with an eraser. Like, I'm sure that there legitimately is a group of people for whom having dozens of little yellow physical circular cardboard tokens in denominations of 1 and 5...
  2. Burnside

    D&D General How to Make Travel Meaningful and Interesting

    I really, really like Level Up: A5E’s Journey activities: Journey Activities | Level Up These really helped me make travel into a fun and engaging mode for my players, rather than the part of the adventure to be “gotten through” on the way to the “meaningful part.”
  3. Burnside

    D&D General About the goals of Strahd (Curse of Strahd) -Spoilers *Maybe*-

    I guess without knowing the details, my concerns are mostly about my view of the DM's role: presenting NPCs with motivations and environments to explore, letting the players interact with those elements, and narrating what happens as a result of player choices and the dice rolls. So for me I...
  4. Burnside

    D&D General About the goals of Strahd (Curse of Strahd) -Spoilers *Maybe*-

    From the “Strahd Prevails” section of the epilogue of Curse of Strahd: “With the characters out of the way, Strahd shifts his attention back to making Ireena Kolyana his bride. If she is still alive and within his grasp, Ireena is turned into a vampire spawn and sealed in her crypt beneath...
  5. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2014) Question for folks who use D&D Beyond: How well does it work with the new rules?

    I'd say for 75-80% of my players (and right now I have a little over 30 regulars), D&D effectively is DNDBeyond's character building tool, and that's it. Most of them really would not consider buying and reading the Player's Handbook even digitally, much less physically. They also don't really...
  6. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Using Action Surge to cast spells in 2024

    I feel like 5.5 RAW allows this, and I don't think it's a huge deal - as @Charlaquin points out, it's a risky move because the triggering event for the Reaction isn't guaranteed to happen, but the spell slot gets burned regardless. I'd allow it (I wouldn't give inspiration for it, mainly because...
  7. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    I once figured out that my annual earnings on DMsGuild are almost exactly equal to my annual spending on TTRPG stuff. They might as well pay me in company scrip (except not all the stuff I buy is WotC). I really enjoy creating stuff for publication, but on a pure time/effort vs cost analysis...
  8. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Teos talks about using the hero’s of the Borderlands Starter Box to run games.

    @FitzTheRuke I think part of the confusion you might be having with the Discord thing is that there actually isn't a "Mastering Dungeons" Discord server. There is @Alphastream's Discord, which has a channel in it dedicated to the Mastering Dungeons podcast. I am in Alphastream's Discord by...
  9. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    That is true, but you will have to trust me when I say that even the top 4% on DMsGuild is...not a lot of money at all. Like everything in the TTRPG space, the profit margins for everything are razor thin.
  10. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    Currently, DriveThru does allow fiction content (including comics). I expect that the reins will be kept tighter with DMsGuild for the foreseeable future though, and they'll stick with adventures, rules supplements, and maps.
  11. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    100% this. Even a 5-room dungeon, when written for publication, can easily run you 10-12 pages.
  12. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    I have read the kit; it's the same content that you can see on the Roll20 page that you linked above, just as a PDF.
  13. Burnside

    D&D 5E (2024) Baldur's Gate Premier Game Jam, from the DMSGuilds & Storytelling Collective

    I've signed up. FWIW, what @SlyFlourish says about the DMsGuild rules & licensing is 100% accurate, BUT that doesn't mean it's necessarily the wrong place to publish - it very much depends on what your goals are, where you're at career-wise as a creator, what your expectations are, and how...
  14. Burnside

    D&D General Take A Look At The Class Boards From The New D&D Starter Set

    I get what you're saying, but I do have enough experience with my brain to know that, all things being equal, "loads of irregular cards and tokens" is always much worse than "sheet of paper" for me personally, across the board.
  15. Burnside

    D&D General Take A Look At The Class Boards From The New D&D Starter Set

    Hot take: this format is in no way easier for my brain to process than a character sheet. That said, I 100% applaud the elimination of the 1-18 ability score numbering, which is a vestigial artifact of earlier editions and no longer needed in the current game. Next re-do spells so spell levels...
  16. Burnside

    D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

    I'm working on an actual play right now sponsored by Green Ronin that uses their Adventure Game Engine, which has mechanics that pretty much mandate telling the player the DC (in AGE's case "Test Level" but it's the same concept) number for effectively any skill roll they try to make (and such...
  17. Burnside

    D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

    In some cases, people use "player skill" to mean "system mastery." Meaning people can become very skilled at knowing how the abilities on their character sheet work and when and how to deploy them in play. For others, player skill means looking up from the character sheet and using more of your...
  18. Burnside

    D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

    I actually think the 2024 rules are a step backwards towards 3E-level granularity and away from 2014's move towards DM fiat. The 2024 rules attempt to codify a lot more player actions than 2014 does, and assigns set DCs to many tasks where 2014 steps back from doing so.
  19. Burnside

    D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

    As a designer, when making stuff for 5E I do my best to create encounters that allow multiple solutions, and can be solved by skilled play or by character-sheet-based options or by some combination of both. I don't always succeed at designing for that, but my strongest stuff allows for both...
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