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There was a deaf child NPC in Dragon Heist who used a sign language she had invented to talk to her friends.

The unique thing about astral elves is that they could swap out a skill proficiency, in addition to a weapon or tool proficiency. In Monsters of the Multiverse, eladrin, sea elves, and shadar-kai can all swap out two weapon or tool proficiencies. Jeremy Crawford said it's because most elves are...

I agree, it seems like it could lead to deeper thinking about your character's place in the world, which is always nice.

Is it a bit weird that backgrounds no longer give any kind of roleplaying benefit? Like how criminals had an NPC contact in the criminal underworld, or how sailors can secure free passage on a ship. Maybe these are just abridged versions of the backgrounds and don't include that sort of thing...

That surprised me more than anything in the UA. I was sure all elves would be getting "swap out a skill proficiency when you finish your trance". That was like the one thing I was 100% expecting.

I like a lot of the things I see in the UA, especially making roleplaying elements like backgrounds more significant to character creation and gameplay. On the other hand, with the added customization and feats to choose from, etc., I hope they don't move away from simple, easy to understand...

I agree that this is just moving the perceived problem, but at least these are just sample backgrounds. You could always swap out a different stat increase. So you can be a Criminal but put the +2 in Wisdom and be a cleric. (If you insist on mechanically optimizing your ability scores for your...

Well, the world is the world, so if this lock exists in it, low-level PCs wouldn't have any chance of getting into it and high-level PCs would. It has nothing to do with what I "want". In any event, I was happy to see that the UA at least says that if the DC is lower than 5 or higher than 30 a...

Ardlings seem very weird for a PHB race. In a Planescape or otherwise planar campaign sure, but as a standard race in the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, etc., alongside humans, dwarves, and elves? My preference is to tell my players that any PHB race is fine for any of my campaigns, but this...

(never mind)

So now I have to keep track of the PCs' lockpick bonuses in order to decide whether or not to allow a roll. Why can't I just set a high DC and rely on that to eliminate impossible attempts?

Let's say there is a magical lock, imbued with ever-changing cylinders from the plane of Limbo itself. The DC to pick this lock is 35. Could a level 20 rogue pick this lock? Yes, with luck. Should I allow a level 1 fighter who found some lockpicks a roll?

I'm sure like any other UA they are starting off a little too extreme and the final version will be backed off into the realm of reasonableness.

As the DM I don't always know a priori if their bonus would allow them to hit DC 25 or DC 30. If natural 20 automatically succeeds, now I can't just set a DC but I have to consider each and every time whether or not the PC's bonus would make it possible to succeed and disallow the roll if not.

Players hate that, though, and then there's an argument wasting time at the table.

First homebrew rule for me will be to remove this. "I seduce the lich." "You can't..." "I got a crit!"

I guess if it's flexible it's fine, otherwise it feels like backgrounds get locked to classes, the same way that races were supposedly locked to classes.

I'm interested to see what direction they go in with this. It seems to me that WotC has been moving further and further away from heavily grid-based play as time has gone on.

I've played both the Starter Set and the Essentials Kit adventures one-on-one with my 10 year old, and I think the tone works well for that. Not too edgy or complex, like you said kind of a comfortable generic fantasy vibe.

I recall the vaporware 4e VTT. I don't have a particularly powerful PC (I don't play video games that much and when I do it's on the PS4 or Switch) and I'm skeptical about how smoothly it would run an Unreal Engine VTT.