The monthly Saturday #DnD5e game went extremely well again. Everyone leveled up to 2nd level, and they set off into the wilderness to find a dungeon whose location was kept secret from them, but was being transmitted to the wizard's apprentice they had with them. The dungeon is guarding the Eye of Vecna. I took a page out of 13th Age and made it a Living Dungeon, one that was created specifically to move from place to place to keep the eye hidden.

I read an interview about the new Transformers movie, and how they want Prime to have a character arc where he goes from not wanting to protect Earth and only being worried about Cybertron, to "where he is in the previous movies." Oh . . . goodness. I don't really want a Prime that doesn't care about anyone but his own people, even if it's part of his "story arc." The comment about "where he is in the later movies . . . " from the 2nd movie on, Prime gradually became more of a bastard. He was the Prime I wanted in one movie.

I'm really torn on this, because I love Michelle Yeoh and the Empress has really grown on me, but at the same time, I really hate Section 31. Not in a "I enjoy hating them way," but in a "I hate the narrative they have evolved into."

https://twitter.com/StarTrekOnPPlus/status/1648340768300625920

I'm fine with the idea that nobody is perfect, and some people in the Federation would be tempted to advance what they see as the greater good of the Federation by violating its principles in an extra-legal organization.

First off, I'm glad that Teos is posting these summaries, I really appreciate it. I'm really kind of perplexed at some of the decisions, and lack of decisions, going into this development so far. #DnD5e

https://twitter.com/Alphastream/status/1646526838372696065

This year, WotC has amazed me in multiple, very different ways. The OGL situation was so bad, and they deserve all the crap they get for it, but it also really needs to be noted how far they retreated when faced with an angry fanbase.

WotC intentionally named one game release as a ".5," but there is not universally accepted standard for what IS a .5 edition of a game. In fact, from a marketing standpoint, it was actually a pretty weird thing for them to do. Declaring it "3.5" probably contributed to the panic about compatibility, because it wasn't just saying "we revised the same rules," but tried to communicate that "it's compatible, but only to a point."

Just me, sitting here pondering what it would be like to model an NPC in #DnD5e as a tactical fighter by giving them resistance to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage if they have a weapon in hand. But also let PCs make an ability check whenever they hit the NPC to figure out their defenses, which would also remove the resistance.

For some random reason I decided to watch deleted scenes from Star Trek Nemesis to start the day, and wow, do I not always agree with what the people in charge think are important story beats. There is a whole section where Shinzon is addressing his supporters and the new Romulan senators that establishes that not only were they working on this for a while, but that he was having to convince the fleet to continue supporting him.

We really do need more politicians that understand that "this country does not have our best interests at heart, so we should be careful dealing with them" is actually different than "this country is our enemy." Ironically, saying someone is your enemy to someone that isn't already your enemy is a good way to make them into your enemy.

One interesting aspect of looking at the #OneDnD playtest documents is that it makes me realize things that I didn't fully process in all the years of running #DnD5e. For example, I knew the Artificer is a class that is very dependent on its subclasses for its identity. It never struck me how true this was for druids as well. The core druid is a very thin framework on which to hang subclasses, with the subclasses doing a lot of heavy lifting. This became even more true as subclasses started using Wild Shape as a player currency for abilities.

This morning @BrandesStoddard started talking about dwarves and comic relief, and the degree to which it can be too much, etc. This reminded me how much I loved FR11 Dwarves Deep. There was a lot of stuff about dwarven culture in this book that, shall we say, kind of got overwritten by pop culture suddenly becoming aware of dwarves and glomming on to some very specific traits.

Some thoughts on languages based on what we've seen in #OneDnD so far. Backgrounds have really added to how many languages PCs are likely to know, since language is an assumed thing that you get from backgrounds. When you add that to classes that get a special language, you have a ton of languages that exist all over the place and probably won't do much other than remove a reason for the PCs not be able to receive information from a clue.

Side note: because I had a Klingon counselor in a game, I tried to figure out what Klingon counseling would look like. I didn't want to do the knee-jerk "that's not a Klingon thing."

https://twitter.com/WhatDoIKnowJR/status/1624080903168196610

Since Klingons are very practical and action-oriented, and because they do seem to value being able to confide in a companion, I figured that Klingon counselors would work beside someone in their usual job as the Klingon client discussed their problems.

I've been listening to a few discussions about Star Trek, and how effective character storylines were, and some of it inevitably revolves around how a ship's counselor makes sense, but the shows haven't always done the best job of highlighting their competency. Disclaimer: I'm not a mental health professional!

I immediately thought of this in game terms. One of the reasons it's hard to show off competency in counseling is that most competency in Star Trek is measured by success in a given scene, or by the end of an episode.

Because of @ToyGalaxyDan, and because I got my shipping notice for Warduke, I decided to dig into Warduke's history a bit, mainly because Dan mentioned the fire attachment that goes over his sword on the action figure. I was actually kind of surprised to see that a proto-Warduke actually appeared on the cover of Dragon Magazine way back in 1978. The signature helmet is there, and broadly, he's got some scales on him. Wow is that a 70s era image.

thetomeshow.com/e/having-fun-t…

The Tome Show and Edition Wars cross over today to discuss new editions, 3pps, and OGLs, and as someone trying to put out a podcast in this era, I completely empathize with announcements coming out RIGHT AFTER you record. I'm not sure I ever saw 3rd edition or 4th edition marketed as backward compatible, ever. 4th edition was pretty clearly a "new, better, ultimate" edition that you needed to switch to wholesale, based on the marketing.

Tripped over some discussion of the very wrong Batman/Batgirl elements of the animated Killing Joke and Batman Beyond backstory, and all of it revolved around age differences. At some points in the lives of adults, that's not the end all be all of red flags, however . . . 1. Barbara was one of Bruce's protégés when she was still pretty young. He had a position of authority and responsibility over her. Barbara deserves better than to have someone in that position single her out for romantic attention.

Just to make a clear statement, since I've got a podcast talking about #DnD5e with @orikes13 and @Thelight101, I love D&D 5e. It's my favorite iteration of the game so far. We started the podcast because we love the game and have fun playing it. I am not going to support WotC until they take steps to make their position less hostile to the community and more permanent. But I've still got a lot of material, and I'm still looking forward to a lot of exciting 3rd party material.

I was skeptical about the 1.1 document until the Kickstarter semi-confirmation came, but I just sat down and read it today, and I'm more upset now, not because there were things I didn't know about, but because of how it was expressed. One thing that adds credence to this document is that some of the language is very similar to what was published in the D&D Beyond article about this. Just with a lot more . . .
dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogl…

I have no special knowledge about the situation, but I would guess part of what might have led to something like the 1.1 leaked draft being created, when viewed in light of the "under-monetized" narrative, revolves around three things. 1. Video Games

While D&D has had numerous well-received video games, for some reason WotC/Hasbro keeps trying to make "brand" video games that intentionally aren't traditional CRPGs.

So I'm seeing a lot of Monolithic "WotC doesn't want to do this" or "WotC doesn't care about this" comments in regard to a lot of trending points of conversation, and I think, once again, it's important to point out "WotC" in these instances isn't a monolith. The people in charge of the profitability of the company have their goals, the people in charge of marketing the brands of D&D and Magic want certain things, and they want those things in context of the brands, not the specific games.

Reading some commentary on Banishment to day got me thinking about the classic trope of banishing something to another dimension, and how to express that in #DnD5e The tricky thing is, banishment in most stories isn't a "the caster snaps their fingers, says a word, and their gone" kind of thing. I may have recently been reminded of this watching the Willow series on Disney Plus.