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The left-hand graph has a rather large and glaring flaw, as it implies that exactly 0% of the player base is 46 or older. Such is not the case.

If you lock them all into having levels and classes and so forth, then sure; I'd agree. What I want as DM is something that says in hard numbers "this creature, on average, is as strong as the strongest possible human, as smart as the average bag of hammers, not very wise, has average...

How many of those campaigns were intentionally run as open-ended though, i.e. without a set "completion" point? I've been running the same campaign for 17+ years now and there's still no end in sight; hard to call it "fizzled" after that long even if it for some reason stops next month.

For me at least, it's because I view D&D as being more an adults' game than a kids' game.

I love it, only when it's truly wild and unpredictable - wild surges from an interrupted spell doing weird things, or broken magic items releasing their enchantments in ways unintended, that sort of thing. I have about 400 different possible entries (a few of which amount to "make s**t up") on...

Part of the problem is that we're a diverse lot; and one DM's "mistake" might be another DM's "best practice", with both of them running games their players greatly enjoy. Thus, there's always going to be objections from somewhere to published advice around something as...

Indeed, but giving them stats anyway allows for quick and easy comparison with characters. Simply saying Giants are tough and resilient isn't enough; saying Giants average Con 24* is way more useful, and by extension provides their Con save bonus etc. without it all having to be written out in...

This touches on perhaps a key element: DMing isn't necessarily hard as in difficult to learn or do but aspects of it - mapping a setting or adventure, referencing and writing out statblocks, maintaining a decent game journal or log, etc. - can certainly be or become tedious and boring and a slog...

I wonder if it's more that existing players are less tolerant of new DMs. If everyone at the table is new, including the DM, then they all learn together. But if some of the players have played before, it's on them to put up with the rookie DM's mistakes; and some people maybe aren't as...

The damage caused by a Mind Flayer still exists, only it's internal and thus not visible to an observer. The damage caused by a Red Dragon's breath weapon might not be "cuts and bruises" specifically, but the burns and singes and and char marks would be pretty much the same as. And the answer...

The game could use more meat-grinder in its theme, even without it becoming primary. More to the point, death-spiral mechanics would force players to think twice before engaging in combat and look for other solutions first. Such mechanics would also force parties to be more cautious (which is...

IMO death spirals should very much be a thing. The most important hit point to preserve shouldn't be the last one you lose, it should be the first one you lose: going from full to one less than full should have impact.

Yet when NPC adventurers of the same capabilities are the PCs' foes those NPCs should be easy to kill? No. What works for one works for the other. Applicable vs. PC and NPC alike, sure. This is one really good 3e idea that subsequent editions abandoned in their quest to have nothing ever...

The problem isn't that you're quoting the rules and using them to defend your position. The problem is that the rules you're quoting are themselves awful, which completely undermines your position before you start.

That, or some sort of wound-vitality or body-fatigue points system where your wound/body points (everyone has these) are mostly meat and your vitality/fatigue points (that you get by gaining levels) are mostly not-meat. Then, certain attacks could go straight to body points, bypassing fatigues.

To make it work, certain attacks need to be able to bypass hit points and go direct to some other effect. Example: slitting the throat of a defenseless humanoid-ish target with a sharp implement should kill it outright even if the target's otherwise at full hit points, regardless of how many...

I'm tempted to say that a simulation mechanic is more of an underlying feature of the setting independent of whatever abstractions might be in use, while an abstraction is a rules-based attempt to model something in the fiction that the players can't do at the table (physical combat being the...

This... ...and this... ...only serve to tell me that the "Fantasy Combat" system being used is in serious need of repair.

Various people upthread have done a fine job of defining simulation in the same (or better!) terms that I'd use, which means I don't have to type it all out. :) In short (yeah, right!) and in summary, then, simulation to me represents a collection of elements mostly around relatability: ---...

I'd put it more that the GM found a major flaw in the simulation and corrected it on the spot. "On the spot", however, isn't exactly the best time to be making corrections to how the simulation works. Ideally, big things like this get caught and fixed well ahead of time.