Oh, they can add content not included in the original purchase? And they ask me to buy those things they worked on if I want to play with them? Fucking monsters… someone needs to stop them.

Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but I’m a fan of Interpol and I can give some recs for bands I consider similar, not individual songs.

• Bloc Party
• Cage the Elephant
• Young the Giant

Everyone else thought it looked like shit at first sight, I don’t know what they were expecting.

Maybe they should let developers make fun games instead of trying to land the next big cash-cow.

It’s hard to not sound snarky here, but you could play another system that’s not seen as a commodity to be passed around Corps for profit.

I switched a couple years back, and honestly couldn’t see going back even before their licensing drama. As a GM, their books are so hard to make work, and expensive for what you get. D&D became too much of a product, and the game has suffered. 3rd party stuff has always had better value and usability compared to WotC books (few exceptions), and other systems give much better support for GM’s to actually run the game.

The coolest shit you do in D&D is the stuff you’re group comes up with at the table, and you get that with any system. Tencent also can’t buy that, so there’s nothing stopping you just playing 5th Edition, and not 6th (or One, whatever Marketing ends up calling it).

There are a few general problems with the idea overall. It’s possible to execute them in an enjoyable way, but a few of your ideas are considered “Do-Not’s” for inexperienced DM’s.

No-win situations aren’t fun. If you’re planning on running a whole combat where the party has no chance of winning, it’s likely they will be frustrated. It removes character agency, and makes all of their decisions and actions meaningless.

You’re better off just starting the session where you want, or forcing the scenario early in a different way, than letting them think their actions will affect the narrative when they won’t. . It’s fine to send them to hell and not give them a chance to avoid it, just don’t make them think that they could have, if that makes sense. It’s about expectations, if you manage them well, you’ll eliminate a lot of disappointment

Don’t take away levels, period. If you want to hinder them for some reason, make the class features themselves unreliable. The Paladin’s smites don’t work in Hell, his god has no power here. Devils resist fire, and have resistance to weapons, etc.

As far as taking their gear, that’s not always a bad idea, but you’ll get mixed opinions on it. If you do it, make sure they can get it back relatively quick. Don’t have them fighting with rocks and sticks for multiple sessions. Maybe one of their captors is looking to escape too, or overthrow the overlord and will get the party’s gear if they help. That gives them a choice to make, and you get to throw in some unintended consequences.

If your main concern is on overpowered magic item, my advice is to let it ride. It won’t be overpowered for long, and as DM you can always tinker with monster number, HP, resists to counter it. Again, it’s a feel-bad moment for a player when you take their cool toys. If it’s very disruptive for your game, or you’re worried about party balance, then just talk to the player and say you need to nerf it some. You can reduce it’s charges or lower the damage dice. Basically anything is preferable to saying “this item is too strong you can’t use it anymore”.

Hopefully some of that was coherent and useful, but good luck with your game. Hope everyone has fun.

Banner Saga

There was a short segment on 60 Minutes (maybe?) back in 2020 before the elections where they interviewed someone who had deprogrammed himself from Qanon.

It was the same story. He had no friends IRL, no social support, he had turned his mom onto Qanon and she was still down the rabbit hole.

He said that was the part that kept him in it for so long, even once he started questioning things. All his “friends” and close relations were part of the cult and he would have to cut ties with everyone or worse, they would turn on him and attack him as a traitor.

It would be sad if these online-cults weren’t so damaging to society.

Same. I’ve come to realize the more i plan, the less flexible i am and it leads to bad improv.

At this point i just think of a couple story beats or cool scenes i want to do, then we start rolling dice and see what happens.

Not necessarily true as there are entirely different reasons for doing each. Only a bad GM would fudge a hit that actually penalized you. A good GM might fudge a hit to take the story in an interesting direction. Fudging rolls is just another tool in the box.