Recent content by Hussar

Going all the way back to the WotC market research they did in the 90's, showed that the average campaign has a half life of under a year. That's why 3e was designed so that you could go from 1st to 20th in a year of sessions.

Huh. What's that like? I had been playing for nearly 30 years before I actually played a campaign that came to a conclusion. Every other campaign fizzled. Either real life steps in and squashes it, or the DM burns out. I've been gaming since the early 80's and it wasn't until a 5th edition...

My only issue with that map, if the squares are meant to be 5 foot squares, there would be far, far too many combats or encounters where half the party couldn't do anything. Fighting in tight corridors is fun in fiction but boring as heck in gaming. 1 square as 10 feet? Yup, that'll work...

See, that? That right there? A year "hardly seems to qualify"? We know that most campaigns, even by experienced DM's rarely last more than a year. Most campaigns fizzle after about 3 months due to all sorts of reasons. But, think for a second, what you're asking of a new DM. A campaign...

Whereas in my experience, that DM will drop the campaign six weeks in after realizing the amount of effort it will take to actually run a campaign that's longer than a 16 page module. I mean good grief, there's a reason that players outnumber DM's by a HUGE margin. And that's always been true.

Well, yes and no. For example, you talk about starting at an FLGS. For lots of us back in the day, that wasn't an option. The FLGS was driving distance away and not accessible for 13 year old me. Without any contact with other gamers, outside of maybe the odd Dragon magazine, there was one...

Heh. Now yes. There's a GREAT point. The OOTA maps are truly attrocious. FAR, FAR too large. Like, pointlessly large. Take the Whorlstone Caverns (and if you don't think I have to be REALLY careful whenever I type that...) Now, as far as map design goes, it's fantastic. Those tiny...

But have any of your players told you that? Have you ever had players revolt en masse from your table? If no, then, you're probably okay. "You are a bad GM" online is more "I would never do it that way and I wouldn't enjoy it, but, I'm not at your table, so, my opinion probably doesn't...

There's a flipside of this as well though. Gamers are cheap. They are. Think about it, your DM (if you have a DM) spends 3-4 hours running a game for you. On top of that the GM probably wrangles scheduling and make sure everyone shows up. Add to that actually preparing for the session...

Going back to the idea that "square 1=humanocentric settings" we do need to explore why those settings were humanocentric? I mean, the argument is that a setting which doesn't put humans at the pinacle will automatically put them at the bottom, so, why are humans the go to race in Greyhawk...

But, how many tried gaming and then bounced off/quit after a fairly short time? IME, LOTS. Of the gamers I played with into high school, I'm the only one who stayed in the hobby. I don't know anyone in person that I gamed with who is still gaming. None of my friend/acquaintances from back...

Time pressure. Back in the eighties and nineties, you had tons of unsupervised time. No one has that now. You have to schedule “play dates” with adult supervision. You have endless hours of classes and group activities that are scheduled for you. On and on. There is just so much more...

Dunno if this is RAW or not but when I made a bunch of npc troopies for my current campaign, I just did what they did in 2014 and added species abilities to the base humanoid stat blocks. So my goblin scouts are a bit different than standard scouts and my Dragonborn veterans have a minor breath...