D&D 5th Edition

The AL is very good, overall. I have had few quibbles with the modules I’ve run. I also like the DM gets some xp from running the mod.

Also, in February is TotalCon out in Marlboro. They have a great AL setup there.

I ran my first adventure league game last night. I ran “Cellar of Death” which is $3ish on the DMs Guild. It is a nice little adventure, intended to be run in 2-3 hours, and to introduce 1st level characters to the Tomb of Annihilation or the adventure league modules that shadow the book.

I did not run the game at a store. I ran it at a friend’s house with four twelve year olds and two dads. The dads have only played a few times, in similar situations. One of the dads is clearly playing to spend time with his son, but the other dad I think has a genuine interest in the game. Both dads were totally into last night’s game, which I really appreciated.

Using the Advenute League rules allowed me to reign in he 12 year olds a bit. Two of the twelve year olds have great imaginations, but one of them would still prefer a Monty Haul style game, and the other would prefer to have the game be pure storytelling, sans dice or rules. I get both of those desires, but the game I prefer to run is more of a classic style game, following the rules and slowly earning your loot and levels over time. The kids grasped what I was trying to do, and I allowed some unusual ideas (grappling arrows in combat aren’t really a thing, but ok), but for the most part we stuck to a conservative game.

The Cellar has an urgency to the mission and that was great because it forced the boys to keep moving rather than get bogged down arguing over the usefulness of blow darts vs skeletons or how to open 5 locked doors in a deadend. I think everyone had a good time, even with a near TPK in the end. I recommend that adventure and I’m looking forward to running the game again for a different group. Also, I get to shop for a new adventure on the DMs Guild. That’s a pretty nice system.

Mark, what did you mean about the DM getting xp?

Near the back of the module—or section if it is a mini-module—there will be an area labeled DM rewards. You can apply these to one of your characters. It’s a good way to get a character to tier 2.

Fun piece on D&D in The New Yorker today, although their styleguide forcing the author to repeatedly write “D. & D.” is maddening by about the 4th graf.

“Role players were seen as closet cases, the least productive kind of geek, retreating to basements to open maps, spill out bags of dice, and light candles by which to see their medieval figurines. They squared with no one. “

Thank God for the internet, which allowed us to finally square with one another.

I like the Dan Harmon quote:

Last year, Dan Harmon, the creator of “Community” and an avid D. & D. player, produced and starred in “HarmonQuest,” a role-playing television show with celebrity guests. He offered his theory of the game’s popularity: we have always been geeks, but we didn’t know how to break it to each other. Being a nerd is “not about IQ or different characteristics, it’s all about obsession and focus and taking something seriously,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “The internet really allowed everyone to realize that everyone was a nerd.”

It reminds me of how the definition of otaku is used very narrowly in the USA to mean an anime/weeb otaku, whereas I understand that in Japan they use it more generally, so for example you could be a history otaku.

$250-$350 for a 3 hour DM session. $83 an hour at the low end? No. I do not believe it.

I’m assuming split between 6 people isn’t bad. That’s bowling league money, even before dinner. I used to drop $30 a week playing pool at leagues in league fees and table times.

Yeah, I’m not sure I’m opposed to people commoditizing GMing. After all it is a skill and it does require time to both hone that skill as well as apply it to a current game.

That said, payed gaming really kinda runs contrary to what I would want from a group. I find that involving money in a game kinda spoils it for me and just changes the way people act. Just look at what happens around Magic. I’d fear that payed GMing might also warp things in a negative way for me.

I like the FLGS model of asking players to pay $5 each and then giving the DM $25 in store credit. The adventure league supports this nicely. But the $83/hour pro DM with his dwarven forge and his chainmail cowl and his Oscar winning clientele seems like a fiction being peddled by Wired.

You think they’re pulling a Stephen Glass? That’s a bold statement.

Yeah, fiction is the wrong word. I’m sure someone pays the guy $250 to $350, as crazy as that seems to me. More power to him if he can make any kind of living off of DMing.

It doesn’t seem out of line with some of the other similar articles posted in this thread about “pro” DMs. It also seems like no matter how much he charges for his sessions, he won’t be able to make a living off of it.

So, back to the DND Beyond vs. OrcPub thing.

OrcPub had to go SRD-only, but there are import files for the source material. I used Purple’s JSS Player Sheet which was handy, but not tablet friendly. He had to go SRD only.

Right now, it’s not much of a problem for me. I picked up Xanathars but my main right now is either a Goliath Barbarian or a Wood Elf archer. Not much in the new book to make me change the classes.

I only play twice a year at TotalCon and the Summer Sizzler event they have. I’m starting to come around to just getting the bare essentials in Beyond: PHB, and the Goliath and the few magic items I’ve picked up in Adventure’s league.

So, I sprung for DND Beyond. I spent about $30 on quality of life stuff. I dicked around with OrcPup and the Purple Character sheet, and with WOTC laying the hammer down on these types of sites, buying the PHB, the one magic item I use, and the one non-PHB background I use seemed like the path of least resistance.

Overall, I like it. It still needs a lot of work. It is pretty easy to get your character maintained, though. They oddly don’t have an option for “AL Legal” which surprised me.

The biggest disappointment is the character sheet export sucks. It doesn’t have any short descriptions for spells and feats; just the titles. They have said there will be a better revamp coming this quarter though.

I started my first 5e campaign (as a player) last night, and had a ball. I like it more than 4e, at least.

5E is definitely my favorite out of all the iterations. Unfortunately my gaming group disagrees, and I don’t get to play it anymore. A few hardcore minmax guys won’t accept any post 3.5 variation of D&D unless it is at least 20% more detailed and fiddly than 3.5. So we compromise and play Fate games.

Overall, I prefer 5E over 4E. 4E I thought went a little too much into the MMO holy trinity side of things. I do not know how people managed their characters without using DND Insider. Between powers and magic items, I would routinely have a 6-page character sheet.

That said, I do miss things like items having conditions and the bloodied effect. 2nd edition with all the green books I loved and hoped with 5E they might get back to that.

Bloodied was a great mechanic they should have carried over. Conditions sort of did? I forget the details of them.

The rest of it was interesting, but ultimately bad for the kind of game D&D is. The abilities stifled imagination. Players didn’t want to risk cutting down the chandelier because… well I don’t have a chandelier cutting ability anywhere. What if it only does normal attack damage (which is crap)?

And then they never made any CRPG out of the system either.

4E is my favorite tabletop miniatures game, and the further I get from it, the less convinced that I become that well-GM’ed 4E is substantially worse for role-playing than, say, 3.5 or Pathfinder. I suspect it mostly just got a bad rap from people who were embittered over the scale of the changes it introduced and without core players evangelizing it during that awkward transition period from purely paper based gaming to our new glorious digital age, it just never “caught” in the same way 5E has. The lack of Stranger Things hurt, too ;-)

None of which is to say that I dislike 5E at all, but I somehow find its collected jumble of bits and bobs from prior editions less brave and daring than it felt at launch. I do, however, appreciate how little nickel-and-diming they’ve foisted on us in this edition. Staying reasonably current with the system is fairly affordable, even if their digital pricing is still a little wacko.