There's a weird bit of technical debt embedded in D&D - the time and distance scales don't quite sync up. It's been in the game since the beginning and shows the game's roots in Chainmail.

This also ties to why 5e characters feel like superheroes. TL;DR - The modern idea of the "encounter" as one keyed room in a 10 or 5 foot per square map is wrong. The encounter is that entire map. Exploration takes place between those maps. Dungeons should be built as keyed nodes connected by passages/stairs/etc.

5e characters feel like superheroes because unless the entire dungeon has the chance to engage them, it's hard to build single shot fights that can threaten them. The sweet spot between easy fight and TPK is perilously small. Instead, you want threats that ramp up as the fight continues. You beat 5e parties through attrition. They can always out alpha strike you.

Bonus actions are hot garbage that completely fail to fulfill their intended goal. It's OK for me to say this because I was the one that came up with them. I'm not slamming any other designer! At the time, we needed a mechanic to ensure that players could not combine options from multiple classes while multiclassing. We didn't want paladin/monks flurrying and then using smite evil.

Wait, terrible example, because smite inexplicably didn't use bonus actions.

It’s a big topic that I will now try to unpack in a series of Tweets. t.co/1TRQh19OTk 3.5 and 4 were very much driven by an anxiety about controlling the experience of the game, leaving as little as possible to chance. They aimed for consistency of play from campaign to campaign, and table to table.

The only question in game design that really matters is, “Why does a player care about this?” Yet, it’s something I rarely see designers bring up. Most RPGs never answer it. D&D 5 aims to make you care about your character as something that is your personal creation, and the ties between your creation and everyone else’s (DM or player).

My earlier tweet about language and spoken bandwidth is prompted by some thinking I have been doing about dungeon design. I'm using this image as an example. Let's assume the party is standing at point M with a torch. As a DM, you have to describe both the room and the hallways depicted. That includes the location of four doors and three corners. That's a fair amount of info to juggle. How much of that can the players actually process?

I'm developing a new style of DMing for myself, riffing off my earlier tweets about railroading. It boils down to this - in a game of D&D, the DM provides the foundation of energy and action for the session, but NOT the direction. I'll explain using combat as an example. I've been putting a lot of work into my combat management and presentation over the last few months, especially as streaming is something I do more of and, honestly, really love doing. It has made DMing into a true skill you can watch grow. I love that.

Railroading has gotten such a bad rap in RPG circles that we forget it is one end on a continuum. The opposite end is aimless drifting, with a DM who sits back and throws no hooks, injects little or no action. I’ve played in these games. They are THE WORST. Too much choice is an empty wasteland. No choice is just the DM talking while the players listen. My experience is that most DMs tend toward railroading when they start, then back away when/if they gain exposure to other styles.