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John Welker's player character "Qok" the Half-Orc Monk in The Spartan Show's, Legends: Through Shadow, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) 5th edition (5e).

More raw notes and transcription.

Transcription of the episode, of course from Khrandum's perspective.

The first session, we completed about 3/4ths of the character generation in about 2.5 hours. We're still reading as we go, so the 400+ page rulebook is a bit daunting, but not poorly laid out. We are planning a second session when I get a chance to finish reading the book, and we can finish the section on magic/spells, then will begin a short scenario. We might have 1 or 2 seats open by then, so if interested, keep your eyes open in the next week or so. Happy Gaming!

I am looking to begin scheduling this group to resume some time in October. We could use 1-2 more players potentially.

melodieustv 4 hours ago It is mostly an old school mentality. Gary Gygax introduced a lot of mechanics in the past that made no sense what soever. Most especially make no sense in current editions and require heavy tweaking to implement in current. Tomb of horrors is a perfect example, particularly from the original module to Return to the Tomb of Horror. These difference not only highlight extreme mechanical differences, but how stories are told. This gets even more apparent as you get into later editions. Changing Cantrips is grossly unbalancing in 5th edition, as a great number of abilities are balanced for cantrips as is. Warlocks are a perfect example. Warlocks in 5e were designed around cantrips for damage, particularly eldritch blast. This is further reinforced by the fact that green-flame blade was introduced. There is also a scaling balance if these cantrips are moved to 1st level, not to mention unneeded overlap with spells at 1st level. Spell casters are pretty useless unless they are casting spells and were really not fun in 3.5 and previous editions when they ran out of spells. This is extremely apparent at low levels when a caster could easily run out of spells in one encounter. And then there is the concentration mechanic. This was implement to stop really broken spell combinations in 3.5 and below. Cantrips were also balance around this idea give spells casters more options while they have a concentration spell. Eldritch Blast and Hex are perfect examples of this as they were intended to synergize 100%. The argument for true strike is invalid since the balance is in the fact that it takes a full round to get advantage, when there are usually better ways of getting advantage without using a full action. Most people consider true strike useless and never select it. In any case there are a number of cantrips that are utility and cover pretty much any situation, with ones like Prestidigitation being a catch all. While examples are numerous and glaring as to why messing with cantrips in 5e is a bad idea. I will leave you with the fact that a crap load of mechanics are balanced around them and even though you think it is a small change, it is actually a game altering change that can mess with balance in very bad ways. Particularly ways that make the game far less fun to play.      

As I point out many times, everyone has different play styles and preferences. I offer my differences for those with similar tastes, styles, and interests, everyone's mileage will vary based on those preferences. :-) For a more detailed response, including participant enjoyment measurements, here is a longer response for those interested in such a long read: I fundamentally disagree with the "need" for such over emphasis on mechanic "balances" at the cost of immersion, story, richness of play experience, etc. While I don't like totally abstracted game systems like the new Firefly RPG (we all liked the Serenity version much more), and I have an active group that loves old school Rolemaster, I am also very fond of The One Ring RPG more toward the Serenity/Firefly approach to RPGing. On a side note, my youngest son's groups (he runs/plays 2-3 per week), after years of playing them, have all abandoned D&D 3.5, 4, & 5e, and branched out to other games, but most notably one of the groups really prefers old school AD&D 1st edition much more now. They range in age from 12 to 17. Overall I prefer to run campaigns that emphasize ROLE-play rather than ROLL-play campaigns, though I will run the occasional more basic Pick Up Games (PUGs), as with the Tomb of Horrors experiment. In my regular games however, I strongly encourage players to focus on the background depth and motivations of the characters avoiding reliance on numbers as much as possible, and enjoying the complex plots of the stories, rather than min-maxing statistics, etc. I really liked 5e's adoption of Rolemaster, Pendragon, and other game system's non-mechanical features in those areas. As far as D&D versions, when I have to run d20-based games, I like 5e far more than 3.x & 4, and even somewhat more than 2nd edition.   Generally the players in my campaigns learn it is better to not rely on blasting their way through everything, whether with sword or magic. They learn the best approach is to take a more immersive thoughtful approach, rather than a mechanical approach (most of the time, there are always exceptions and surprises of course). After having run the changes I made to cantrips (and the 4+ other changes listed) through dozens of groups with different players, the general consensus from my participants, from their responses completing leisure experience feedback surveys, especially the educational and therapeutic groups completing a wide range of surveys,, but also the standard diversional groups, has been the typical 80/20 rule. About 60% really very much like and prefer my house rules, with another 20% being "okay" with my tweaks to 5th edition. On the other end of the spectrum, about 10% are vehemently against the changes and my style (enough so that out of more than a 100+ of my 5e players over the years, 1 person decided up front to leave the campaign because of the handout with the rules changes, 1 other left shortly after a few sessions over the rules changes, and 1 other left after the second session because I record my game sessions on video/audio for research purposes (they all sign releases). Finally the remaining 10% disagree with the changes, but enjoy my games enough overall to live with the changes. These changes are very much intentionally significantly altering the game system "balance" from what I perceive as a more "video gamer mentality" to what I believe is more "appropriate" for a tabletop role-playing gaming mentality. These rules changes adjust the 5e system to be more balanced, for our play style. Including the other significant changes such as the short and long rest ridiculousness changes as well, because they are so far off from my preferences, and those of most in my groups. And as for fun, I don't know how many other GM's have their participants complete satisfaction surveys, but many of my groups that I run do so. I found reasonably higher satisfaction rates from individuals and groups using my house rules (with a typical 5-level Likert style scale scoring on average around 4.6), than those groups that we used only the core rules (scoring more around 3.7 on average). Now of course, that is the beauty of RPG, not only are we allowed to make changes to these rules that are not set in stone, we are encouraged to adapt them to our own play styles. And everyone has the freedom to enjoy making whatever tweaks works best for their groups, and join or leave the groups to find the best fit for their own play style. So more power to everyone for each of their gaming styles, and Happy Gaming! :-)

Previously Hawke wrote: After a week-long evaluation, it is strongly recommend to people considering using Discourse.org's product, to not consider using it in a production environment any time soon. Maybe in 3 to 5 years, if it continues, it can be re-eavaluated. The product is far to fragile, and the community support is far below standards.  http://techtalkhawke.com/news/discord-with-discourse   UPDATE: 20161202 -  I can now recommend people instead consider using NodeBB, NOT Discourse. http://nodebb.org Much better community & developer environment, much better documentation, and far less of a kludge product than Discourse.

Tonight is second session of campaign offshoot, coming from a fantasy setting in a campaign spanning years (Worlds of Beru campaign - ( http://spokanerpg.com/forum/worlds-of-beru-group-7 ), on their way to Jotenheim to return Brunhilde to Valhalla, one of the PCs was thrown from Baba Yaga's Hut (during transdimensional travel as she is wont to do, since her hut according to ancient folklore is basically a TARDIS of sorts :-) ), through the mists of time, space, and dimensions by Baba Yaga for not showing enough respect (in her mind), and ending up smack in the middle of Petrograd during the events of the "February" 1917 revolution. PCs will need to travel through Siberia, Tunguska, Lake Baikal, and eventually Alaska, there to interface with the Inupiat/Inuit, and hunt the Great White Whale (or use other possible methods to make contact with it), to get back through the mists to their own dimension, time, and space, and get back on track with their original quests. They learn a little more Russian folklore, history, and geography, within a fantasy character's context for adventure. Fun stuff!

Resuming September 27th.