I DM’d 5E avidly for ten years. I had fun and loved the stories we told. But over time, the system wore me down. Most monsters stay flat and predictable. The action economy leans hard toward the party, and even major villains feel like speedbumps unless reworked from the ground up. Outside of combat class features often short-circuit social and exploration challenges. I spent more time trying to make the game more interesting than actually enjoying it. The fact that an entire cottage industry of DM advice books, blogs, and workarounds emerged - including my own posts and tips - says a lot. Eventually, I realized 5E isn’t a game for the DM. YMMV.

Enjoying the first book in this series from @monsterhunter45 so far

Hey Alyssa, You're apparently a journalist from Kotaku - So I'm guessing you haven't worked in actual game development yet. Let me try to explain the thing you posted about, which I'm guessing was from that hitpiece from a few years back. Yes, I'm guilty of what's stated in that image. And that's okay, because this is the normal creative process. We brought lots of veterans into Moon because generally great people want to get the opportunity to work on great projects and that's our goal at Moon: We always set out to create the kinda games we'd love to play ourselves, that fill some hole in the market because for some reason these holes haven't been filled yet. And so we're all incredibly passionate about what we do. With great talent comes lots of enthusiasm and passion, which absolutely leads to arguments because ultimately everyone is working hard on getting their vision into the game. But also, everyone at Moon understands that we're working together as a team - so the point of these arguments is then to try to convince each other why this or that solution would be the best thing for the game we're making - and the best solution ought to win! Most of the times the beauty behind these arguments is that everybody gets a chance to contribute and more often than not the actual solution will be one that ultimately everybody contributed to because we're dealing with very complex issues all the time and complex problems often also need complex solutions. It is often a chaotic process, but it's controlled chaos. And yes, absolutely every now and then I have to put my foot down and set the direction... because I'm the game director and ultimately it's my responsibility to ensure that everyone knows where things are heading and that decisions get made. And yes, it has also happened that I agreed to a certain decision, playtested some more and changed the direction after - Again, to me this is a normal part of the process since things get clearer and clearer the more stuff gets implemented and the more we play and test. To me, all this is just how creative work happens. It can be painful, but my job - like any good director - is to understand what's going on and make sure the right decisions get made, even if some work might get rendered useless in the process. See here, even Miyamoto is guilty of that: zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Upendi… A few years back we hired some folks that didn't really fit our culture, so we had to part ways with them and then this article happened. Wasn't a great feeling to see some ex-Moon folks talk badly behind our backs, but ultimately it just made it clear that these folks shouldn't have worked at Moon in the first place and I hope they're happier now wherever they landed. I don't know why you're out here cursing out game developers and what your whole deal is, but I hope that gave you some insight into the creative process and it's messiness (and beauty). I hope you have a nice day, Yours, Dickhead