
RPG veterans and game designers Teos Abadía and Shawn Merwin look at the game and the hobby of D&D from a variety of viewpoints: reporting the news, understanding the business, reviewing the products, and illuminating the design. Whether you’re a fan, a player, a DM, or a designer, Shawn and Teos cover topics of interest to you!
Episodes

Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Rules-Light D&D Characters! (MD 236)
Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Episode 236 of Mastering Dungeons!
Main topic: Rules-Light D&D Characters!
We consider how D&D can be simplified and the goals and tradeoffs involved in creating a rules-light version.
News: Chris Perkins Retires, Greg Bilsland Returns, Tariffs and Tabletop, and more!
Contents
00:00 Reflecting on Sorrow
02:41 2 Campaigns in Same Setting?
13:03 Convert 4E Monsters to 5E?
16:08 Chris Perkins Retires
23:57 Greg Bilsland Returns to D&D
27:08 Tabletop and Tariffs
35:37 GAMA is Broken
37:47 Monte Cook Narrative vs Math
45:03 Rules-Light D&D Characters
47:34 Motivation for Lighter Rules
52:48 Mathematical Side
01:02:14 Ease for New Players and DMs
01:04:25 What to Keep
01:06:48 Arora Trait System
01:09:56 Iterative Approach
01:11:49 Choice Menus
01:15:55 Spellcaster Complexity
01:17:47 Healing and Resting
01:20:49 Shout-Outs
01:24:35 What Are We Gonna Do?
Thank you for listening! Get the full show notes with links on Patreon.
Show Search Engine: https://mdsearch.alphastream.org/
Our intro and outro music is Metropolis Fanfare, provided royalty-free by Tabletop Audio (https://tabletopaudio.com) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
MP3 file metadata populated with Online MP3 Podcast Chapter Editor, built by Dominik Peters. https://mp3chapters.github.io/ and customized for Mastering Dungeons by Vladimir Prenner from Croatia.
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.