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I reject the premise, but only because of my preference for Greyhawk. There's plenty of Hope and Despair to be had, but they are not necessarily tied to the OP's notions of good and evil. Most people are not good or evil, but neutral at heart. They care for themselves and loved ones, likely to...

I've always felt that skills with alternate abilities should be more common than it is. I remember one of the playtests for 5E just suggested using an ability, and allowing the players to come up with logical reasons why a skill should be relevant. I get the reason that was dropped, since this...

These are in order of how often they normally come up, and why Perception - finding hidden things Investigation - realizing why some obvious thing is important Insight - social defense Slight of Hand - I like using traps... a lot Stealth - party likes to have a scout Persuasion - party likes to...

You can have a relatively happy background and be an adventurer, even without wanderlust. Look at Frodo; he was pretty happy before the events of the campaign forced him into adventure. A background just has to explain what your motivation is and why you're at the start of the campaign... the...

IME, the answer is stupidity. It's almost always stupidity...

Not a huge fan of the Realms, but I did enjoy Faiths and Pantheons. It helped me figure out how to create my own.

While not necessarily RAW, I tend to break them down as: Perception: noticing something not obvious Investigation: realizing why something obvious is actually important This can allow the skills to be used for the same things, depending on how they're used. For example, both find traps in...

I think that lifestyle expenses should be a greater aspect of games. In the old Conan rpg, you basically spent 90% of your wealth between each adventure, because you lived a lavish lifestyle. If you live it up (which most people with coin are going to do), then you need to go back out to get...

I've managed to trim down my descriptions to only a few sentences, but I still struggle with exposition. Typically at the start of an adventure, I have paragraphs of information the party needs. Even if I break this up into multiple scenes, it's still so much that I tend to lose my players by...

Greyhawk, because of the lore. While most of the lore would be considered "generic" by modern standards, Greyhawk is the reason for a lot of those generic archetypes.

Party Order often depends on the situation. Traveling overland, I usually choose who goes where based on the travel actions (navigator up front, foraging lagging behind), putting them reasonably close to each other (within 20 ft or so). In a dungeon or other constrained location, the party order...

I think it's a fine setting, it's just not my cup of tea. I've played in a couple of Dark Sun campaigns and had a lot of fun. As a DM, however, there's too many issue for me. While I'm okay with wilderness survival as a theme, I don't feel that D&D does such a great job of it due to magic...

Longtime DM and player. I run alternating weeks, while another DM runs the opposite. It's nice, since it allows me to enjoy being a player as well.

I find it really depends on the player. My current Warlock player is an amateur author, who always includes plot hooks in her backstories in the hopes that they'll become relevant. While not integral to the overall plot (which is still under construction), I've an entire subplot going on related...

Standard D&D adventure... home invasion for fun and profit.

I tend to start campaigns at level 1, but see the advantage of starting at level 3. I've also run Vecna: Eve of Ruin, which starts at level 10.

I feel it comes down to style of play. Control spells are overall more powerful than damage spells, but due to the limitation of concentration, control spells seldom solve problems entirely on their own (although your allies can often provide the damage necessary). Fireball is among the top tier...

Depends on the edition, but since you mention the word "background" specifically, I'll assume 5E. In 2014 rules, you can custom make your own background as part of the default rules. This allows you to easily make whatever background makes sense, no matter how convoluted. In 2024, however, the...

I think group dynamics are pretty important and the exact method of "the group decides." Unanimous or majority rule? Does the DM get a vote? I have a group of 4, so if 2 players agree to level, they'd probably level every session if the DM doesn't get a vote.

Not a huge fan of the Realms and I've not liked the direction they've taken the setting since 4E. I might get some use out of it for my Greyhawk setting, but I doubt I'll use any of the lore they have.