A tale that is perpetually dark in tone becomes tiresome very quickly. It needs to feature the occasional ray of light for contrast and to create a sense of hope. Monsters and other terrors must be offset with creatures that are kind and lovable, giving the characters even more reasons to stand against the darkness. Here are a couple of ways to add glimmers of light to a tragic tale:

• In a land as dreary as Barovia, take the time to describe the occasional scene of beauty, such as a pretty flower growing atop a grave.
• Make sure that the heroes have contact with NPCs who are honest, friendly, and helpful, such as the Martikovs in Vallaki or the Krezkovs in Krezk.

-Curse of Strahd, Introduction. Marks of Horror. 2016.

But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.

That’s not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.

Most of that is being fixed by dilating the amount of damage output that players can output in 5e in a variety of changes in OneD&D.

My playtests have had really gripping & close fights, even with people optimizing their hearts out.

I’ve seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they’re discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.

Also they’ll just “whatabout!” and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.

I’ll have you know I’m capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.

Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren’t right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it’s important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.

Thanks! They look quite slick and have a lot going on. Particularly the void dragons you sent my way.

Each would be more or less perfect for a single-monster encounter, as they are dense with fairly novel mechanics.

Many people think that the WotC statblocks are a bit too boring, but I consider them a good entry point for new GMs. This is clearly a nice way to up your game.

Cheers!

Can someone give a good example if what makes these books good? I’d love to see a single great example of the level of quality that these books bring.

For the people who have a lot of hours on this game, how well does it play for co-op?

My spouse and I actually dated doing Star Wars the Old Republic co-op, where we could play two different characters going through bespoke personal quest lines while being able to help each other out on their journies.

How easily could we get that experience with this game?