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I’ve never run a game for kids, but I remember being introduced to the game as a kid at that age (back in the 1st edition days). It strikes me as odd to change the dynamics of the game to accommodate a child, but it also still strikes me as odd to change the dynamics of fiction to accommodate a...

In my mind, suspension of disbelief in a game is often when something happens where you stop having the characters take it seriously, as if they suddenly realize they’re in a game because one too many odd things have been tossed into the story stew. For me, in my history, it was the session...

Gnome enchanters are basically the Ordering-Kiosks-at-McDonalds of the gaming world!

I’m reminded of one of my favorite stories from history, and the one I remain shocked has never been made into a movie or Netflix show. After the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694, the two men put in charge of the recall and recoinage of English coinage were Isaac Newton and John...

After a long session down in the basement, players enjoy being taken out for a walk!

Where’s the polearm appendix?

That’s basically the way that I’ve always liked, especially since bouncing between characters allows the campaign to play with level — having lower-level reserve characters is good for returning to different styles of play and certain parts of a campaign where higher-level characters wouldn’t...

Oh no, he was wiped out tour suite.

It’d be an interesting experiment to take the DMG’s rules/guidelines on creating a new race/subrace by altering an existing one and seeing for tweaking the Goliath could make for a proper (given the mechanics on “non-quite Large” race’s in 5e) Half-Giant. The +2 Str/+1 Con seems alright, as does...

Coming back to this thread after a few days away, expecting to discuss settings ideas...

All joking aside, a rubber band gun or nerf pistol under the table for just that moment would be unforgettable!

There’s also the fact that many of us have hearing issues that such conflicting sounds exacerbate. I’m “frequency-deaf” of a sort, so trying to clearly process music and voice together is nearly impossible (live concerts are a muddy wall of sound to me). Keep visual and auditory handicaps in...

There doesn’t seem to be any rule issue with it (short of argument legalese of grammatical articles), it’s just a matter of opportunity cost. If a shadow sorcerer wants to play the character as mainly a summoner, that simply means that the PC doesn’t have other points to spend on adjusting the...

Then just play 2nd edition. There are particular mechanical assumptions baked into different rulesets that are different than others. The specific limits on attributes (and levels) in 5e are part of the bounded accuracy math that keep the game running across the lifespan of the campaign. Other...

I don’t have the sheet, but my first character was a human cleric named Father Bernard in 1st edition who rolled the 1% chance for psionics. The 1st-level party entered a cave and was immediately set upon by ghouls. Surrounded, the party quickly were taken down or paralyzed, except for Father...

Type of parties and type of campaigns was definitely as X-Factor. I suppose the point I was trying to make is that Charisma wasn’t seen as some sort of global dump-stat until much later in the life of D&D. In campaigns where the party didn’t use aid or didn’t count on reaction adjustment...

5e FR is basically an odd version of Groundhogs Day, where the same days keep repeating with new Cataclysms, all for Elminster to finally learn not to be a smug scene-stealing jerk.

I’d be concerned if the lead designer for D&D *didn’t* like Moorcock... ;)

A thought occurs to me while reading this: how has our changing relationship with mapping as a culture affected our changed relationship with mapping as gamers? Until a few years ago, having a map to a place meant consulting a general map of an area and determining the route between two points...

I think that a lot of folks are caught in the name, when it’s just a mark of what genre the mechanics emulate — not any sort of historical or cultural ties. I’ve argued that, with the influence of American Westerns on Japanese Samurai films, the class works just as well in emulating a gunslinger...