Sure, but even then it doesn’t make a lot of sense that all the different ways that Warlock patrons can present themselves, that they all are great about giving people raw damage potential as a cornerstone of their pact, regardless of how you flavor it.

“Child pure of heart and innocent of mind. You have caught my attentions, a Unicorn who wants nothing but to live and peace, and to see the joy and love of the innocent as yourself. For your purity of spirit, I shall grant a boon of this magic gun.”

I had taken the artist’s statement that the art is being reworked as evidence of the art being pulled, and at least future published books not containing them.

https://twitter.com/i_shkipin/status/1687829743268442112

I should have waited until the actual statement (linked below), as it’s clear that the artist was making something of a lie of omission above, as I believe he purposefully wanted readers to believe that the art was changing in the books, not that he would redo the art to… essentially no promised effect. Maybe he was lying to himself with the hope that he could get another go at?

https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1687969469170094083

I’ve updated the title of this post to reflect the info from the official WotC statement on the issue. I’m glad they won’t be allowing AI “augmented” submissions from their artists going forward, but I would only be truly happy with a statement that they will be taking the massive inconvenience of making sure that the art is revised for future publications at a minimum (I think a recall would be asking a lot tbh).

There is an undue expectation of high performance that many GMs feel, and admittedly my post here isn’t helping that! So I absolutely endorse your response to making sure that GMs don’t feel the need to do that much work.

In that case it would be helpful to give the players options of backgrounds to select that would be appropriate for the adventure at hand.

Cheers!

And this is absolutely enough for most groups tbh!

The method I described is a lot of extra work than the normal expectation, but it is work that does not go to waste due to it being built around you players and their characters. It should be used as a tool to make sure that extra efforts are less likely to be discarded.

But of course, following with slyflourish’s advice, be prepared to abandon anything the players do not engage with.

It is railroading in the fashion that you are setting out a constructed plot ahead of time.

It is not railroading on the fact that you are not taking actions that nullify your players’ choices, which is the bad part of railroading.

And yes, this is explicitly involving the players in the writing process in a way that makes a bespoke plot they will enjoy while ensuring little of your effort goes to waste.

A tale that is perpetually dark in tone becomes tiresome very quickly. It needs to feature the occasional ray of light for contrast and to create a sense of hope. Monsters and other terrors must be offset with creatures that are kind and lovable, giving the characters even more reasons to stand against the darkness. Here are a couple of ways to add glimmers of light to a tragic tale:

• In a land as dreary as Barovia, take the time to describe the occasional scene of beauty, such as a pretty flower growing atop a grave.
• Make sure that the heroes have contact with NPCs who are honest, friendly, and helpful, such as the Martikovs in Vallaki or the Krezkovs in Krezk.

-Curse of Strahd, Introduction. Marks of Horror. 2016.

Structuring an adventure with skipping Tier 3 entirely sounds interesting, NGL. It’s not something we have seen before.

A happy tradition of taking inspiration from all of larger pop-culture.

But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.

That’s not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.

Most of that is being fixed by dilating the amount of damage output that players can output in 5e in a variety of changes in OneD&D.

My playtests have had really gripping & close fights, even with people optimizing their hearts out.

I’ve seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they’re discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.

Also they’ll just “whatabout!” and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.

I’ll have you know I’m capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.

Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren’t right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it’s important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.

Thanks! They look quite slick and have a lot going on. Particularly the void dragons you sent my way.

Each would be more or less perfect for a single-monster encounter, as they are dense with fairly novel mechanics.

Many people think that the WotC statblocks are a bit too boring, but I consider them a good entry point for new GMs. This is clearly a nice way to up your game.

Cheers!

Can someone give a good example if what makes these books good? I’d love to see a single great example of the level of quality that these books bring.

For the people who have a lot of hours on this game, how well does it play for co-op?

My spouse and I actually dated doing Star Wars the Old Republic co-op, where we could play two different characters going through bespoke personal quest lines while being able to help each other out on their journies.

How easily could we get that experience with this game?

Of course not! In fact I love this video because it’s such a sympathetic look at the term, and its place in culture.

Just maybe make sure we keep it cool it on social media.

While this is all well and good, I think the OneD&D playtest provided a great fix on the biggest issue I’ve had with the mechanic: Remembering it exists.

Simply stating that on an unmodified 20 or 1 that Inspiration is granted is a fantastic way to remind the GM that they should give this out more often. It’s gotten to the point that in cases where I would have previously given ad-hoc advantage, I now give inspiration where the player can make use of it if they feel like they want or not.

Also I have adopted those rules for both hero points in PF2e, and my regular D&D5e game. I mean both of them.

How it works…

A player rolls a Natural 1 - They get inspiration to use on a future roll. A player rolls a Natural 20 - They choose another player at the table who gets inspiration.

These two together more or less ensures that there’s an amount of inspiration floating around all the time. But this also solves an issue where a hot-streak gets hotter, and someone with luck early on will get more of a spotlight later. By making success something that gives a boon to someone else, you build espirt de corps as everyone celebrates eachothers’ successes more, and the spotlight be more likely to move to another player.

As I said before, this system works fantastic in both Pathfinder and D&D. The only downside is that it feels like PCs have an extra layer of plot armor, but that is mitigated by the fact that it wasn’t my decision that I made capriciously. Also it makes math rocks a little more ‘WEEE’!

I think this mismatch will likely be fixed in OneD&D, as the Ancients Paladin is revised to have a more broadly applicable feature.

My suggested fix would be to make it resistance to all the common draconic damage types. Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison, and Acid.

Does Neverwinter Nights count? It was sub-bar D&D online, with janky real time mechanics, built on 3.5e ruleset. If anyone else remembers the persistent server City of Arabel, it was like a smaller scale MMO set in the jewel of Cormyr. I have a lot of neat memories, but its fairly bittersweet because if you weren’t in a particular playerbase clique, you were a de-facto NPC.

That was my inroad into D&D. I lovingly crafted busted builds that worked only because of quirks of the aforementioned jank.