Recent content by delericho

It's mostly in "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft". As far as I could tell the rules team at WotC were very much on board with these changes; I'd be really surprised if that was why anyone left.

That has been true in the published materials prior to 5e, but isn't really true of the 5e revised setting - WotC have deliberately taken an "anything goes" approach to their settings, and equally deliberately chosen to drop any prejudice associated with species. Even the prejudice Tieflings...

I think the last time I remember any player choosing to play a human character was 20 years and two editions ago. By and large, my experience since has been people choosing characters as far from human as the campaign would allow. Though, in fairness, they did also consider which race gave the...

Since I stopped gaming actively I’ve found I’ve been dropping in here less and less, and the frequency with which I post anything has dropped even further. It’s mostly just curiosity at this point – both in terms of RPG news (where ENWorld has been my go-to site for decades, and will remain so...

As the OP says, Heroes is the obvious choice. I'm inclined to suggest 24. Although that first season isn't the only good season, none of the others really reach the same heights (actually, even the latter half of the first season don't live up to the first 13 episodes). Plus, as they went on it...

At this point I think the OGL is essentially poisoned, unfortunately, so I wouldn't bother with that one. Either, or both, of the other two seem good options.

I prefer to play face to face and with as little technology at the table as possible. Online play is okay in a pinch, but I spend too much time in video calls to ever love it. Away from the table, I'm happy to use any and all tools available. I don't really care what games are popular or how...

For me it's monster books, with 3rd party stuff actually taking the lead over WotC - the various "Tome of Beasts" volumes and the "Monster Manual Expanded" books. (If it's relevant: I've only used the 2014 ruleset. I don't currently intend to update to 2024, but if/when I did I'd probably then...

If I actually make reasonable use of it, it's worth it. For one of the big $50 hardback books, that means it needs to see regular use for most or all of a campaign. For a smaller adventure, it means that the adventure has to be run. The upshot of that is that the core rulebooks of any game I...

Yes and no. These days, I won't buy a game unless I have fairly solid plans to play it soon, so that mitigates against a lot of purchases of this sort. However, if I do intend to play it soon, I may well end up buying in to the latest version of the game, even if I have a previous edition that...

I've run "Lost Mine of Phandelver" twice, and one bit of "Storm King's Thunder" twice. I think that's all - I find the concept of running something multiple times a little odd as I have so much adventure material that I'll never use all of it once, never mind repeats. (The two runs of LMoP were...

"Lost Mine of Phandelver", but absolutely not "The Shattered Obelisk" - the adventure is very much not improved by the expansion. Before that, you're going all the way back to "Red Hand of Doom".

I haven't allowed it recently, due to being philosophically opposed to the notion. That said, going forward I'm now inclined to relax that, as one of my other philosophical stances is that it's the player's character, so I shouldn't impose arbitrary restrictions.

"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules" - Gary Gygax

No idea. Perhaps the initial enthusiasm didn't match the play experience, or the group just didn't gel, or... something. I dunno. But my understanding, based on old and half-remembered survey data, was that an awful lot of "campaigns" don't make it past the first session.