Greetings fellow adventurers!

Do you find yourself arguing with your DM or other players about “rules as written” or “rules as intended”? Or perhaps tweeting Jeremy Crawford (the lead rules designer of D&D) more than once a week? Well then, this is the blog for you.

While I’m not necessarily in the same category, I do take a special interest in exploring different rules in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. I often catch myself mulling over weird and obscure rules found in the numerous source books, such as why fall damage caps out at 200 feet, resulting in a paltry 20d6 bludgeoning damage (considering the average roll of a d6 is 4, the total damage would be around 80, meaning an average 10th level barbarian could survive a mile high fall without even raging). (PHB. 183)

If these are the conundrums that plague you during your games, or if you wanna talk about alternatives and additions, then read on! I’ll be taking a deeper dive into rules such as the one cited above as to why they’re written the way that they are and what can we do to change them to better suit our needs?

I’ve been playing D&D for close to 8 years, off and on for that time, but have been running a fairly regular (weekly or bi-weekly) longform campaign for about a year now. My friends and players refer to me as a walking Player’s Handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide, and will regularly sit in shock as I can recite not only the rule as written nearly verbatim, but can usually pinpoint the page it’s listed on without too much trouble. I’m also an aspiring game designer and love to pick apart different systems and find ways to “break” games that I love by finding odd and/or incredibly effective ways to play.

In the end, my goal here is to help you and me both better understand rules in this beloved tabletop roleplaying game, and if we can’t figure it out together, I’ll do my best to suggest alternatives for use in any game. If this is something that interests you, follow this blog and let’s Rule for Initiative!