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I agree. It's a careful balance. I have fond memories of Shadow of the Demon Lord and 13th Age which seemed to play fairly straight forward without a ton of extra cruft. I'm looking forward to trying them again this year.

D&D 2024 definitely added complexity on top of weapon masteries. Several classes now have “free action” sorts of abilities like the paladin firing up channel divinity and inspiring smite off of a normal attack + smite and the rogue trading in sneak attack dice to do other things with their...

This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of the ORC license. Creative Commons is a much clearer license.

One thing the other article linked to identified was the difference between legendary and non-legendary monsters which is pretty interesting. I've argued that bosses need help just because they're bosses. People love ganging up on bosses so they need extra defensive and often offensive power to...

There are a couple of good analyses: https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/monsters/monster-manual-2024/ https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469 My easy rule of thumb is: AC / DC = 12 + 1/2 CR HP = 15 to 20 x CR Attack / Proficient Save = 3 + 1/2 CR Damage per Round = 7 x CR That...

The D&D 4e DMG2 was also well regarded, and still is. I'll have to look at it again. It's been years since I looked at it. VTTs as advanced software (actual real software) is a good example. Foundry is cool but it has a high learning curve in my experience. But the GMs who love it really love...

Mike Mearls had two interviews recently, one with Ben Riggs and one with Professor Dungeon Master. In both of these interviews he brought up a thought that really resonated with me: The idea that RPGs and GM-focused accessories are really like designing expert software for expert users – think...

We can always make it ourselves =)

Looking at the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Oil of Sharpness: The old one from 2014: Do we think this is a typo or the intent to make permanent +3 magic weapons?

Guess who's sending in our PDF print proof for the City of Arches tomorrow???

This is a really good point. I think the design guidelines for monsters for D&D 2014 overcompensated for monster features that subtracted from damage per round. The new D&D 2025 MM seems not to take these effects into consideration as much, which I think is good. I argue that monsters need some...

I think three smart and handsome individuals wrote a book doing exactly this...

That’s probably fair

The difference is that DTRPG doesn't also make and advertise the number one RPG in the world on their own platform alongside yours. That makes publishing on D&D Beyond a unique situation. They're marketing their own products next to other publishers. They sell products at a much better margin...

I think it could become the dominant platform where high-dollar 5e content is sold and it becomes more dominant the more stuff they sell there, including their own. This is what makes D&D Beyond different than any other platform – they are the number one producer of the material they sell on D&D...

Ghostfire Gaming just ran a near-million-dollar Kickstarter for Grim Hollow Transformed not only advertising it as compatible with D&D 2024 but even their D&D Beyond integration (which is pretty wild). This is pretty much exactly what WOTC said they wanted with the OGL 1.1 – the only difference...

I am pretty confident we will. It's really in WOTC's best interest to do so. WOTC wants more publishers writing material compatible with D&D 2024. That way other publishers risk their own money on compatible products and WOTC can bless the successful ones for ingestion into D&D Beyond. Then WOTC...

I argue we're actually dealing with a small-data problem. Some stuff might be obvious and some might be a wild-ass guess. Some folks here will be right just by being lucky. But the design team is small. They put out few products. And the environment is always changing. I wouldn't bet money on...

Paul Hughes, the lead designer of the Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie and writer of the excellent Blog of Holding, wrote an article building the D&D 2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card where he analyzes the statistics of monsters in the D&D 2024 Monster Manual and compares them to...

Now that you have these experience, what advice would you give to DMs getting ready to run D&D 2024?