Tasha's Cauldron of Political Correctness

 Hoo Boy.  Tasha's Cauldron of Everything leaks are coming out, and it looks like some of it is playing catch-up with Paizo.

Tasha (of Hideous Laughter fame), the Chaotic Evil temptress from the World of Greyhawk, is being re-defined.

Polygon is talking positively about it, so I'm sure I'll hate it.  They're making it so that there is less difference between the races, and none of them have any penalties.

On the positive, it seems to be consolidating some of the classes from the assorted books, and has brought in some more of the other rules so you wouldn't need to buy the odd setting-specific books such as Guildmaster's Guide to Ravinica.

I'm looking to get OUT of 5e, and more into OSR or possibly Fantasycraft, so my desire to invest is nill.

Better Ideas than 'Fantasy Wheelchairs'

 There's a colossally stupid idea floating around, and again its in the name of 'representation' championed by people that it doesn't represent.

<sigh>

Do a web search for it. 

Here's a Q&A Snippet: (DocJones took one for the team reading it)

"But it can float up and down stairs! Isn't that unfair?"

"No, unless you plan on making all the able bodied characters at level 1 also remain on ground floors only and never go up and down stairs and into dungeons. If you were planning on doing that then that's fair."

Short version - the article creator, and advocates of the idea, posit a high-power artifact level wheelchair for you to imbalance your game with.  Floats/flies up stairs, well-nigh indestructible etc.

Just the sort of thing a first level character should get for free.

RPGPundit goes into detail on why it isn't about what they say it is.

Grim Jim has an excellent video debunking it.

It's just a dumb idea under D&D rules.

Well, after a 'spirited' discussion over on theRPGsite, that spans over thirty pages spread over two topics, and quizzing my players, even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal of which rattled off a half dozen better solutions.  Here's a top ten:  

1. A semi-sentient suit of armor, a la Iron Man
2. Flying Carpet
3. Modifed Tenser's Flying Disk spell
4. Master/Blaster, Yoda Backpack
5. Fancy Saddle and mount.  Especially if a gnome or halfling, use a big dog.
6. Necromatic spell, bone legged 'walking' chair. (Thanks Ghostmaker)
7. Animate Object on a regular (legged) chair.
8. Magic Gondola
9. Golem Carrying you around
10. Magical 'Cybernetics'

...and the obvious solution - Have it fixed magically.  If you're rich enough for the chair, you can afford the healing magic.

Remote Gaming...

 I'm beginning to have a hell of a lot of empathy for you folks that have no choice but to game via the Internet.

I find that everything takes a little longer and since I'm the only one with a camera, people will wander off be distracted and I can't catch it.

And if you're a seat-of-the-pants GM like I am, being able to read the room is a huge perk.

So here's my best practices that I haven't quite put into practice:

Expect everything to take a little longer.

Be willing to do a little more theater of the Mind

Don't skimp on prep, especially if you are not doing theater of the Mind, it's a lot harder to whip out the Whiteboard and have it play well without the right software.

And on that note have the right software for you and your group.

There are tons of free options don't pay and for God's sake don't subscribe until you do a lot of digging into the free options.

Those are my thoughts so far.  As the Kung Flu continues I will be putting more online resources in my resources list. 

Resources and hangouts:

As mentioned, I'm going back Old-School.  Random tables to shake me out of ruts.  Roll and Shout over Stop and Look it up.  Most of these are going to be useful/interesting links to any GM.  I'll perma-link and update as I can.

theRPGsite - Holy crap, an honest to God forum.  This is the Stoa where I go to watch bad ideas die.  If you're at all thin-skinned, avoid.

Medieval Fantasy City Generator - watabou has an awesome one-click tool to toss a city down.  I recommend using it with some flavor of random city system like - Vornheim or grab the city crawling rules from Last Grasp; alternately use his Cörpathium system.
I mean, if you're a real psycho, you could expand the map and detail it.

While you're there, Last Grasp has generators for nearly everything.  If you can't find one, make it.  You can save the links in your bookmarks for the seat-of-your-pants DMing I prefer.

The Angry GM is good for getting my focus back, and solving problems I didn't know I had.  And creating new ones.  He's a dick.

The Monsters Know What They're Doing - and so does Keith Ammann.  I bought the e-book, by way of thanks but the blog is excellent.  While it is very 5e system specific, no matter what rules you use, his habit of deconstructing what a monster is, and how that should drive its behavior, should be studied.

I switched from Evernote to OneNote for the purely pragmatic reason of having been paying for it as part of Office, but then I discovered Cryrid's templates and it has been nothing but WIN.  Hands down this has worked out best for my scatterbrained DMing.

Goblin Punch has me half-convinced I've been doing it wrong for a lot of years.  Funny, insightful and awe-inspiring by turns, if you look at NOTHING else here, you must read why God Hates Orcs.  In fact, f*ck this blog and go read his.

Land of Nod is another good gaming blog, his bar fight rules well, rule.

Scribd is my go-to library these days.  Tons of books and audiobooks to mine for  inspiration - poke through the Appendix N reading list and go wild.



Currently, My Reclamation campaign is using D&D 5e rules, but I'll either be changing to some flavor of OST or FantasyCraft (depending which leads to less of a player mutiny) after the current campaign arc.  

F***ers have me blogging now.

...and that's a good thing. 

STATE OF THE GAME

I had put my long-running game to bed some time ago, and like most things it died with a whimper - nuclear explosion notwithstanding.

It had its roots in my World of Greyhawk shared campaign world from the 80s, and persistent NPCs, history, and had traveled from rules-set to rules-set from , 2nd Edition AD&D->RIFTS->GURPS->Savage Worlds.

Those roots had become shackles.  The continuity (I'm kind of a nut about continuity) had become

After being rudderless for sometime, I decided to go back to D&D.  I had played a few sessions of some flavor of 3.X; played one 4e game at a convention (it was fun, but didn't feel like D&D), and started running a Pathfinder Adventure path.

None of them quite clicked for me... and I dipped into 5e.  It's pretty ok.  There's sections still lifted whole-cloth from 1st edition, and its backed off from some of 3.5/Pathfinder-isms.

What's got me ACTUALLY inspired is my new home-brew world.  I'm taking a more old-school approach to world building; nothing exists unless it needs to - I only render it when the PCs get there.

We're two plus years in of not quite once a week gaming, and I'm just now finishing the map of the campaign area.  It's been pretty liberating.

So most of my posts will be of interest to my players, lurkers, and other GMs.