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On Wednesdays Lore Collage will focus on public play as well as advice for DMs and players of D&D.
Public Dungeons & Dragons
Campbell County High School in Wyoming added a D&D club. No, the participants aren’t combatting Demogorgons and saving Star Mall.
Pandemic D&D offers socialization
Dicebreaker speaks to Game to Grow about how roleplaying games create social connection. Though the lack the campfire, usually, they are similar to the campfire tales of our ancestors.
Advice for DMs
This is old advice from Think DM, but it’s always good to review how to address problem players.
Cutting Words doesn’t play well with the game as it is currently played. You only need to remove one line to improve the spell.
What if dragons are just former adventurers transformed by their greed and avarice?
As a fan of uprisings and rebellion fantasy, this entry about how to bring revolution to your campaign fueled my soul.
Starting a homebrew campaign many DMs start with a continental map, but it’s much easier to start local, because that’s where your players start.
If you think 5e skills don’t make sense, wait until you try to figure out how earlier editions handled skills.
Advice for Players
Want to play yourself? Melbourne University created an app that converts your face into the six attributes and a suggested class. It thinks I am a CE, Cleric with STR 15, DEX 9, CON 12, INT 9, WIS 15, CHA 9. Maybe. Probably not, as I haven’t been close to a STR 15 since my 20s.
Full Moon Storytelling 
I love ‘Game to Grow’!
Think DM is good as well…
I know that you are probably way more open anyway, but what did you think about the AL announcement to abandon the PH+1 rule (because that is like freakin’ gospel to many long-time D&D DMs and players)?
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I haven’t played in AL, though 100% of my characters built for fun adhere to AL rules, so I don’t know that my opinion matters. At my table a player can play any combo allowed in my custom world (it’s pretty narrow) or I play with the full gambit of 5e books.
But I also expect the players who combo multiple books to understand their own abilities. A player with a complex race/class combo shouldn’t be asking me what they can do.
At my last Orca Con I spent hours chatting with the Game to Grow guys.
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I have not played AL for years (OK, over a decade…). However, I find (through conversations online or my observation in VTTs like Roll20) that many DMs use the PH+1 as a general rule of thumb (actually, even Mike Shea/Sly Flourish has admitted to using this in some of his campaigns).
Totally agree on your point that if a person is going to go buck-wild on their character creation, they should have the full understanding of what they bring to the table… Although beginners can be a bit of an exception – I try to allow as much as possible for them in order to make sure they enjoy D&D and increase the probability that they continue playing; I do usually try to find ways to simplify their character concepts to allow for their creativity but to simplify the mechanics – for everyone’s benefit, DM & player alike! That being said, I also encourage them to stick to fairly simple concepts in order to help them be more manageable – that also make for a more enjoyable player experience.
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