Yes. Well, no. Well, sorta.
Rather than making races illegal, I defined what races were available in my last campaign because it was supposed to take place in a part of the world that had very specific limitations.
Primarily, there are no reptilian races in the area. This is because I want them to form their own empire elsewhere in the world, and I want that to be the second area of the campaign we play in with everyone playing a reptilian character.
IIRC the forge is like $15/month or something, which makes sense since I pay around that for my server on AWS, and I turn it off when it’s not in use.
Don’t forget owlbear rodeo.
Not every consequence should be negative, but not all should be positive, either. There should be a mix of the two.
My suggestion is to literally ask them which story threads they would like to resolve poorly. Take their answer, pair it down to something managable and focus on that. Make the outcomes bittersweet because they asked you to.
Then, take one of the threads you wanted them to pick that they didn’t (because they will always do that) and resolve it yourself in a bad way.
On the flip side, ask them which threads they think probably ended up fine. Pick one or two of those and let them self-resolve better than fine because of the PCs’ actions. And turn those into a resource that the PCs can tap when things get serious later.
No matter what fork you take, you run into ogres.
Even if it is immediately a false choice, the point of the fork in the road isn’t necessarily one of immediacy.
A poor DM will run the same exact campaign no matter what fork you take.
A good DM will still have the choice you make have impact, even if the immediate result no matter which way you go is a pair of ogres.
Maybe, if you go left you choose to save the prince rather than the princess. Yes, no matter which way you went you were going to encounter the ogres and it’s only the hostage that’s different. However, if the one you don’t save gets killed by the Basilisk-knight, that means you got to make a choice that impacts the campaign.
It just didn’t put you into conflict with the knight that the DM hasn’t written up yet. That’s next week.
Training wheels are useful tool for beginner cyclists, but not useful for advanced cyclists. Likewise, quantum ogres are a useful tool for beginner DMs, but not for seasoned DMs.
I hard disagree. Quantum baddies are useful no matter how seasoned a DM you are.
Quantum enemies are a technique you can use to help preserve the prep work you do as DM, and doubling the prep you do isn’t a mark of experience. Use it when appropriate, and avoid using when the story says you must.
That all sounds like way too much work. You’re basically re-designing the entire game at this point.
IMO, your time would be better spent finding a system that already does all that. They do exist!
I would suggest maybe taking a look at 13th age, or some of the renaissance games like WWN and the like.