Recent content by Remathilis

The RC is probably the closest D&D ever got into cramming the whole game into one book. Seven classes, 36 levels, spells, magic items, the whole bestiary, weapon mastery and skills, the core rules, domain rules, a mass combat system, even info on gaining immortality, topped off with a mini...

There is also a really good summary of Mystara and the Hollow World in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

I'm not a purist and if you already own the AD&D monster compendium, I prefer the Karameikos box set. It really does try to explain setting for Basic using AD&D terminology. Then work backwards into the Gazetteers when you get a feel for it.

The Essentials Kit did that: it let you build simple characters and gave them six levels of stuff to do. What I've didn't do was hold your hand on learning to play. Ideally though, it was a good intermediate product between the starter and full PHB.

Maybe true of the OT, but we were playing the prequels. And it was an absolute poor fit because Jedi ARE big damn heroes. We wanted fights like the Duel of the Fates and ended up with a lot of characters downed quickly rather than long, cinematic combats.

Saga. The condition track quickly made each fight spiral. Though my group was used to Revised, where a single crit is death, so maybe there was some PTSD involved from that.

The worst death spiral game I ever played was Star Wars. For a genre that was supposed to be about swashbuckling heroic action, the group of players I was with quickly turned into battle-hardened Nam vets who jumped at every shadow and only acted when they had overwhelming firepower. "Attack...

Sad BECMI noises.

This is an absolute mismatch of expectations on both ends. New players don't know what they are and aren't capable of. New DMs don't know what PCs are able to handle fairly. That creates a double set of errors: PCs don't know when (or even that they can or should) run, and the DM doesn't know to...

Still waiting for Forge of the Artificer...

I'm not saying that was the placebo, you could dislike it for a number of reasons. I'm just pointing out that Essentials did try to blend some of the older D&D styling into 4e and that spoonful of sugar might have helped the medicine go down better for some.

I am thoroughly convinced if 4e ran in reverse order (starting with essentials and ending up with the PHB) the game would have been better received. Essentials feels like the bridge between the older style of play and 4e's very modernistic style. As it was, the transition from 3e to 4e...

You brought up an interesting point: thanks to the d20 glut, how many properties are left to tap in the RPG square? I guess you could Fortnite it and have a Jedi, a Hogwarts wizard, a white mage and an a member of the Order of Assassins form a party to go fight Freddy Krueger, but it's not like...

Final thought: that also assumes a traditional setting in the vein of Ravnica. A UB product COULD just be something like an Elden Ring bestiary or a Species of Final Fantasy without a larger setting context: a real "use this how you want in your game" style material that could havea module where...

So let's realistically look at what a Universes Beyond could be. MTG:UB comes in different sizes from a secret lair (a handful or cards, some re-themeed and some new) to a full set. I don't know what the D&D equivalent is but let's say it's the difference between a web supplement and a full...