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I get it. I'm not on a chess timer for turns. But when your turn comes, you get three choices: Act Declare you are waiting to Act when a condition is met (after the orcs go, when the fighter is out of the blast range, etc) Stand dumbfounded in the fog of war and take the dodge action while...

Really, all I did was make the player decide what action they will take on their actual turn rather than a nebulous "I'll declare what I'm doing when I'm ready."

It effectively made initiative less about acting first and more about getting your ability to act first and then acting whenever you felt like. It might sound strategic and cool, but it was basically some dude on his phone until I called his name and then thumbing though the PHB and then...

Interesting. Can people tell you're a level 7 rogue (assassin) by looks or...

No, I want them to be ready on their turn not wake up and decide to do their research then, followed by jumping in when they're good and ready some point later. (Which has also lead to "Well I was going to cast X, but while I was delaying and looking it up the fighter dropped, so now I'll jump...

So much of this game was built on DMs and players engaging in "good natured antagonism" that it really paints the Hickman Revolution as a truly remarkable turning point. The idea that DM and player were supposed to cooperate for the shared goal of creating a narrative is so radically opposed to...

Strangely, the rules were instead written to assume the players will be jerks who min-max and meta-game every last possible advantage if allowed to do so. I am again reminded that Gary's relationship to his players was that of wise father and his petulant children.

Luckily, none of my players did that, but it does make "until your next turn" powers useless if you can just delay your action until after the power users next turn to get out of the condition.

I got real tired of this exchange: Me: Player, it's your turn Player: oh. Uh.... ::Grabs PHB and begins rapidly flipping through spell chapter:: I'm holding my turn. Let the next guy go. Me: ... Ok. Player 2? Player 2: ummm... I guess I attack? ::does turn:: Me: excellent, the for looks...

It's taken the better part of half a decade to break my players of the "delay your turn" rule from 3e. Many liked to delay there actions until later in the turn (sometimes for tactical advantage, but often because they weren't paying attention and now need to look up a rule or spell and don't...

Which is a good reason to limit viking hat GMs IMHO...

Not quite. The intent was to provide small ongoing support. Two books or so per year. Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse were planned and SCAG and the "cancelled" EEPG were developed as supplements. If the ST/CR boom hadn't happened, I think we would still have gotten most of the APs...

But it can not enable them. If the DM wants to set up the paladin in the Kobayashi Maru to strip him of his paladinhood, he can do so. However, the 5e DM has to create the mechanism to strip him of his status and state that exists as a house rule at session zero. In AD&D, the DM need only say...

Eh... I think it was better at giving cover to the impulses a DM may already have rather than implant the desire in the first place. Regardless of which came first though, I think it was there mostly because Gary didn't believe in giving an inch to players without extracting a foot in return and...

In my experience, DMs like to hide behind passive aggressive rules like losing your abilities if you roleplay wrong so they can shift the blame from "you're not playing the way I think you should be playing" to "You're not roleplaying the way the rulebook thinks you should be playing." You can...

Depends. Mostly it's a Great Wheel. Sometimes it's an orrery of 12 planes (and a lost 13th). Even when I did design my own, it was still just a paired back Great Wheel because I still felt the need to find homes for all the planar creatures D&D uses with much regularity.

I've done a lot of thinking on how the aesthetic of medieval times has moved from the more colorful costumed look to the grimmer and modernistic appearance of the 90s on. I think that has more to do with Hollywood than anything, but D&D art and aesthetic certainly follows the trend. As an...

Well... Final Fantasy 1 (the original NES game) borrowed very heavily from D&D as D&D was (for a brief time) a giant influence on Japan's idea of Western fantasy. The influences on D&D were fairly unknown, but D&D's distillation of them was. More people in Japan probably read Record of the...

I don't think we're going to see new versions of modules, and I think settings will be updated in expansions (like Forge of the Artificer) rather then reprints. So I don't see Curse of Strahd 2024 or Van Richten's Guide 2024, but I do see a new Ravenloft book or module that updates mechanics in...

Oh please no... I tried to like DH. It's too loosey goosey for my tastes. I'd much prefer 5.75 over DH if that's the direction they go in...