TERFs will also straight-up join with anti-feminists. It’s okay to be anti-choice, anti-gay, “socially conservative,” whatever. Despite yelling about how they’re protecting women, none of that matters so long as they hate the same people.

Huh. I kind of do this in between sessions. I like to read a few pages, maybe a chapter or two, from whatever rulebook, just so I’m constantly brushing up on the rules.

Three-way tie. Unfortunately there hasn’t been movement on any due to personal stuff, but hopefully soon:

• Pathfinder 2e for a modern D&D-type experience. (Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but I have plenty of gripes with 5e.)

• Dolmenwood. Currently awaiting delivery of the Kickstarter. For those old-school D&D vibes.

• Burning Wheel. My favorite game I’ve never played, even after owning the books for nearly two decades. :P But for real this time!

To go one step further, it’s not just that their customers will fill in the gaps, they’ll also take the blame.

The DM struggles with a products that provides them with little to no support? “Skill issue. You just need a good DM.”

The DM works doggedly to fill in and paper over the gaps? Sure, they’ll appreciate the DM, but WotC gets some credit because “This module is so much fun!”

Fun fact/wet blanket:

Actually those are just coins, which can sometimes be triangular in the Forgotten Realms.

Interestingly (to me at least), the only specific example I found was the Sembian silver piece, or “hawk.” In the image, we also see what looks like copper and gold, too, at the minimum.

Sokka, Scanlan, John Snow, Walter White - except “more based” or “less of a cuck”.

The two that stick out most to me are Sokka and Walter White.

A major part of Sokka’s character arc is outgrowing his misogyny. I mean, Christ, the Kyoshi Warriors episode had him humble himself, ask to learn, and crossdress.

As for Walter White, his arc is becoming “more based” and “less of a cuck.” It’s also about him becoming a total monster.

There’s been a lot of discourse about “media literacy,” and it’s frustrating that the people who most lack it, often in destructive ways, end up just dismissing the criticism out of hand, as though it’s not dead-on.

To make this extra stressful, Revivify is the only resurrection spell I allow if I’m running 5e. :)

(Okay, to be fair, that doesn’t mean I ban player resurrection in heroic campaigns. I just want it to be more of an ordeal, y’know? So it has to be a quest, or require bargaining with some kind of supernatural entity, or come with a price or chance of failure, etc. I just don’t want it to be “I cast the spell, or go to someone who can cast the spell and pay some gold.”)

A tale as old as time: the linear warrior, quadratic wizard. (TVTropes warning.)

I think it’s a problem just because of changing expectations for the game. If you’re playing modern D&D, where combat is supposed to be balanced, character death is rare, everyone levels at roughly the same rate, yeah, it sucks to be an early level wizard or a late level fighter who can’t keep up with the rest of the party. I get why the trend has been to try to balance them, even if it’s a bit wonky. I get it, it’s hard to do.

But if you’re playing it in more old-school way, where it’s more gamey, it makes a LOT more sense. Combat isn’t necessarily balanced, character death is more on the table, you’re more likely to have a rotating cast, and parties can have different levels between the members. So the late-game magic-user is the reward for playing the class that’s weaker earlier on, and the fighter is great for jumping into the action.

Honestly, that’s one of my biggest gripes: so many character abilities are just “turn this part of the game off.” Something like Goodberry completely obviates the need to worry about food, and darkvision leads to annoying assymetry, and incentivizes the GM to just gloss over it, or hand the one player who doesn’t get it from their race or class some magic goggles and be done with it.

If you don’t want to play worrying about light sources or food, you can just do that. If you want to track those things, you can make it fun. But 5e’s approach is kind of neither. It’s there, but it sucks, so it doesn’t matter. Bleh.

My potentially controversial take is that metagaming is neither good nor bad. A metagaming problem is really just some other problem that rears its head through metagaming.

You can metagame and be a good player. It’s like doing improv with dramatic irony. If you’re prioritizing the gameplay and everyone’s enjoyment, it’s a useful tool.

If you’re using it for the personal advantage of your character, though… that can also be fine. Some old-school games, especially dungeon crawls, are like strategy games testing the players as well as their characters.

It’s when there’s a disconnect between how people are playing the game that you get problems. If someone wants to play a strategy game while others want to play improv, and they’re not thinking about what kind of approach is appropriate and when, that you get issues.

Yeah, that’s what I was wondering. Most of the criticisms of high-level play come from 5e players, which is fair, since it’s pretty much not supported. But I also remember the high-level books from my 3e days!

I haven’t had personal experience with it, but I know BECMI D&D supported it. I think the lower tiers (Basic and Expert) are more popular than the latter (Companion, Master, Immortal), but still.

Which edition are you playing? From what I can find, the Epic Level Handbook was 3e.

For people playing 5e, yeah, the game just breaks down around level 13-15. One of the funny things is that WotC has clearly recognized this is a problem, because they’ve implemented a solution… which is to just not publish high-level material. They just gave up on it.