Just drawing the situation out, even roughly, is already an enormous step forwards from theatre of the mind, and is doing most of the heavy lifting here. It’s also not “theatre of the mind,” like the original poster is implying. It’s a map, just one without grid-spaces or precise distances.

This works for situations where exact positioning isn’t too important. When want to have AoE spells, move speed, flanking, and battlefield control, it generally because difficult to ensure that the GM and the players have the same picture of the battlefield. Even just drawing it out roughly can help a lot, but pure theatre of the mind really works best when you only care about distance rather than relative positioning and complex battlefield conditions.

Mhm, the original guide was written in the context of sneak attack, so I didn’t want to pick anything that was limited to a specific class (other than rogue), but I’ll add that in now the guide is more generalised.

edit:
Smog sight is extremely limiting compared to every other option to see through obscurement, to the point I don’t think I’ll bother listing it outside of, like, an appendix if I ever make one of those.

edit 2: Alright, Murksight and Water Sight added.

I’ll crosspost some of my guides there!

It’s never something I’ve done frequently, even before COVID. I’ve been to a couple of game shops, but often our group would use public or semi-public spaces like library rooms or common rooms, when not playing at one or another players’ house. That’s before we went fully digital.

From two weeks ago.

If you’re talking about anything that matters, even if it seems like it’s just personal experiences like love or exploring the world, it’s political to somebody.

Nah. Evil is where the harm your actions do to other people doesn’t stop you from doing it. Neutral is where you wouldn’t put yourself especially at risk or especially out of your way to help others, but you wouldn’t hurt them either, even if it benefited you. Obviously there’s a spectrum there, most neutral people would do harm to others if they had a gun to their head. Enjoying the harm you do unto others is sadism, which is separate from alignment. A good or neutral person can be a sadist, but their morality will prevent them from hurting others even if they enjoy it. In short, sadism provides a motive (of which there are many others), alignment provides the restriction or lack thereof.

Tl;dr if order a village slaughtered to take all their stuff, I don’t care how dispassionate or purely self-interested you are, you’re evil. If you murder people because you’re paid to, and don’t much care about the details, you’re evil.

I’d allow it.

If your PC has the ability to turn into a fly, then the game has deliberately given them some amazing stealth and scouting capabilities. I say this is working as intended.

There’s a funny thing about Darkvision, since depending on the exact game and edition you’re playing, it doesn’t always even work in dimly lit rooms, only complete darkness. Which gets a bit silly, sometimes.