My First 5e Houserules

Now that I've actually played the game, I can confirm some of the house rules I'm going to be using for 5e.

• Inspiration points: As anticipated, I largely forgot to make any use of Inspiration last night. So, instead I'll be using Inspiration points. At the start of a session, each player gets 3 (actually, 1 per hour the session is expected to last). These can be spent at any time just as Inspiration is used currently, including giving them to another player.
• Alignment: Yeah, I'm not using it.
• Encumbrance: Yeah, I'm not using it.
• Ability Score generation: Each player can choose for himself which of three methods to use. You can only choose random rolls if you roll in front of the group, and the moment the first die falls you can't change your mind. The three methods follow:
• Random roll: 4d6-drop-lowest, arrange to suit. Reroll if your highest stat is 13 or lower, or if your net modifier is +0 or less (before racial modifiers).
• Standard array: The scores are 16, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8. Arrange to suit.
• Point buy: You have 28 points to spend. The costs are as per 3.5e: 8 -> 0; 9 -> 1; 10 -> 2; 11 -> 3; 12 -> 14; 13 -> 5; 14 -> 6; 15 -> 8; 16 -> 10; 17 -> 13; 18 -> 16.

I won't be using these for the remainder of the "Lost Mine of Phandelver", but intend to start with my next campaign. This gives me a little time to consider them further before confirming them. But I'm 90% sure this is the way I'll be going.

5e in Actual Play: First Impressions

I hosted my first game of 5e yesterday, playing through the first part of the "Lost Mine of Phandelver" adventure from the Starter Set. There were two players, both of whom elected to play custom characters (rather than pre-gens). It was a little disappointing to have three call-offs, but such is life.

The game played out largely as I had expected from my read-through of the Basic Rules and the Starter Set, which is to say that I was very, very impressed. This version of the game is refreshingly light and extremely intuitive (though I'm sure we got some things wrong!).

The adventure was also much as expected: the first part is indeed extremely cliched (an inevitable goblin ambush and then a dungeon crawl), but as I had expected the dungeon design allowed for plenty of choice on the part of the PCs as part of their exploration, and the relative lightness of the rules gave me more headspace for role-play and other interactions.

Sadly, the session ended in a TPK, probably because the group had two PCs and the adventure was designed for five - I did reduce the enemy numbers in several places, but the lack of some character roles still made itself felt.

All in all, I was hugely pleased with the game, and remain highly impressed with the adventure, which I still rate as one of the best I've seen (and probably the best ever from WotC). I'm looking forward to the next part, and also to getting together a proper campaign using the system.