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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8340529" data-attributes="member: 42582">Interesting. These do strike me as potentially controversial, because adhering to them seems to me likely to cause some difficulties in running a standard AP. I'm thinking of the "not building to win" - for skilled PC builders (probably many ENworld posters) I get this, but I think beginning players who build "for fun" might run the risk of having their PCs die in an early encounter! (I know that 5e is widely seen as "easy mode" compared to eg B/X, but having seen a new group of kids playing recently they really are not very good technical game players!)I think the second dot point for GMs is also potentially controversial, because it bumps into some presuppositions of APing pretty hard.So I might change those two if I wanted guidelines that are a good fit for "typical" 5e play, as best I have a sense of it. The Dying Earth RPG and Burning Wheel both give advice on how to allocate starting points which is more constraining than what is technically permitted, and I would probably suggest something similar for 5e D&D PC building. (Eg identify at least one stat that will support your PC in their main mechanical schtick and make sure that it starts at 14 or 16 or whatever experience tells us is an appropriate floor for generic effectiveness.) For GMs I'd want something about how to manage action resolution outside of combat, and also what to do if the result of a combat seems apt to disrupt the planned trajectory of events. I'm not sure what exactly the former should look like; for the latter, Prince Valiant has the concept of a Rescue Episode to be deployed in such circumstances, and while I've never used it, I can see what it's there for. Something similar - eg about how to approach total group capture and feed that back into the plotline, or how to handle rescues by allied forces - might be useful.I think I'd also add in some advice for players about being willing to manifest their characterisation so as to embellish scenes, but taking cues from the GM and fellow players about when enough is enough, and corresponding advice for GMs about making space for this but not letting it (i) destabilise group harmony, or (ii) disrupt the general trajectory of events.</blockquote>

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