The Berlin years

When I got to start at University, I converted Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I liked and had an audience participation tape of, into a RPG location for D&D, Frankenfurther Mansion. 

Once courses started, I wore a T-shirt with the cover Iron Crown's Gorgoroth, sporting three Nazgul riders in front of Mount Doom. That way I met Dirk, who was a D&D 1e player from Tübingen, one of the older students whose name I now cannot remember, I think Martin, and another co-student, Thomas, and we had the makings of a gaming group. Yvonne, another co-student, joined in, and one of her girlfriends for some time to, as did one more co-student whose name now eludes me, a blond guy who liked to wear black and who listened to industrial music. 

Dirk also was part Myra, of a play-by-mail from Tübingen, that was playing in a world established by a German pulp-magazine fantasy series I had never heard of nor read, but I started playing in there and played a pirate empire on the world segment of Corigani for a few years. Later I repurposed the rules mechanics to run a middle earth play by mail for a few years too, back then there was no internet quite yet, so you would get real letters and make photocopies in a copy shop to mail out the newsletters of the last turn. 

We did go to a retreat on a cottage in Schwaben that Dirk organized, and where he ran D&D Desert of Desolation, with Raoul, Yvonne and Thomas, and one where we were joined by a fun friend of his, Richie, who was super laid back. I also mastered a cottage playing Elric!, with a fantastic adventure by Dr. Stephen Schütte, Arioch's Children, one of the best I ever played. Thomas had nightmares from being in prison in game.

Berlin as Germany's biggest city of course was a heaven for role playing (or any other fringe hobby really), with several shops selling role-playing books and paraphrenalia, and several cons being organized, and there also was Nexus E.V., a roleplaying association. At these cons, I attended other play groups' tables, and ran some games too, and through this found serveral new friends and play circles. 

One of them was André, a guy from a low-education background, who lived in a bad part of the city, and was very smart and funny, but always embroiled in some financial difficulites or dubious business venture. He tried occutism and magic tricks, and he had not the most healthy eating habits and was heavily overweight. I played turn-based strategy games on the computer with him, Warlords and such, which was fun. He joined our regular group. We continued the Elric adventure, which stressed him when the weird people from behind the mirrors wanted to observe his character around the clock, and then played mostly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay where André GMed, or Call of Cthulhu where I did. Yvonne also brought on Raoul, who was a super nice guy and one of the people running Nexus E.V., and with whom she was together for some time, but later they split and instead she brought her new partner along, and Raoul peferred not to come any more. 

At another Con I met both Pittel and Daniel. Pittel was part of a group of people that included another Daniel, a friend of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen and old-time Glorantha/Runequest player. I played in his Runequest group regularly, and got to meet Niels and his cute girlfriend Claudia, who also was a role player and competitive archer, Daniels wife Kerstin who would not play, but made delicious guacamole crackers for us, Robin who played a humakti duck, and Eini, an old schoolmate of Pittel. We also played regularly at Eini's place in Potsdam im Schwerterweg (Sword Way, a nice street name for a role player), also Glorantha, and Earthdawn (to this day I get an earful from Claudia that I killed her fairy with my necromancer), and we started a large scale battle game which never took off. They also organized Glorantha-related cons, were you would meet people from all over the world, many from the UK. 

The otherDaniel had a GM named Frank, who lived with his ancient grandmother in a nice old villa with high ceilings in Wannsee. I would treck out there once a week for a game in his hombrew "Silvermoon" world, playing homebrew rules derived from 1e D&D (I think). In this group I also met Stefan, and a few other regulars.

When Magic the Gathering came out in 1993 and flooded Berlin's role playing scene, I caught the bug too.  Nils, who was a mathematics student, introduced me to it, and trashed me with a black vise. Soon I was building lots of decks and playing a lot. Most of the others also did a little, and Daniel and Stefan likewise were into it, and of course we'd meet many other players, including Pischner who for many years ran an MtG blog. That is a different story, though. Pittel disliked Magic because it pulled people away from RPGs. Raoul also sold his cards after a while. I still continued to play role playing games, but not that much any more.

Old DSA Games of our youth

We originally played Das Schwarze Auge (DSA). We played it for several years, with me as DM and mostly the same party, from 1984, when DSA it came out, to about 1989, when we started to explore other systems. Four years of magical childhood and youth. 

Before we brought in other players, my brother and me we wrote and played a couple own adventures, that each would run for the other, one-on-one, to learn the ropes. The oldest one where some notes are still preserved was from him. It was written and played in the old Black Forest Libding-Cottage where we spend many of our childhood vacations. I recall it had a Tazelwurm, the most terrible monster in the origianl rules, and likely a deadly fight for a first level character, but he also put a weapon in it that could kill or scare off the wurm with a single use. Soon brought in other friends from school.

The original play-group consisted of my brother Marc playing first an adventurer called Frodo (yes, I know ... we were kids and it was not that unusual for early RPG to have blatant ripoff names) and later a druid named Bombax (and even later, another one named Dan Gat). His friend and classmate Andi played first a dwarf named Ragondir Zornbold, the name was from the intro booklet, and later a wizard named Madruk; my friend and classmate Dieter played a rogue ("Streuner") called Spuk, later a fighter called Quintus; and another of Marc's friends and classmates, Marian, was playing a fighter called Tschaba de Hut -- he dropped out after some time. The rest of us are still playing, 40 years later.

The first adventure was "Silvanas Befreiung" (Freeing Silvana), the intro adventure from the rulebook, sporting a small dungeon under the house of the initial self-play adventure in the port city of Havena. After the players cleared that dungeon, they made it the basis for their adventuring, outfitting it with traps and a treasure vault. 

We played nearly all the available official modules. From todays view, I would say that some of these adventures were badly designed, badly executed or generally boring, but when we were kids, and we knew no better, these worked for us.  We missed playing "Das Wirtshaus zum Schwarzen Keiler" (Black Boar Inn) for level 1 characters, the most well-known one of the original four modules, as we played others first then our characters were already too high level to go back to it.

• "Wald ohne Widerkehr" (Forest of No Return), level 1-2, you had to defeat an evil necromancer in a ruined castle in the eponymous forest. This was fun, fond memories.
• "Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen" (Ship of Lost Souls), level 1-3, a ship with bullywugs and crocodile lizard men; cannot recall much. Not great.
• "Die Sieben Magischen Kelche" (The Seven Magical Chalices), level 1-4, from which mostly an atrociously out-of-universe riddle is memorable - the answer was "Rolling Stones" and the riddle was talking about the real-world rock band 

Other adventures were published by Schmidt Spiele. Of those we played the following (the order might have differed, my memroy is vague after all these years):

• "Unter dem Nordlicht" (Under Northern Lights), level 3-8, an adventure in an ice palace, with puzzles. I think it had a puzzle with symbols that were the numbers 1-9, with their mirror images aligend to them. Not as cool as it sounds. 
• "Durch das Tor der Welten" (Through the Gate of the Worlds), level 3-8, a weird adventure on a huge "world-tree", where I checked the weight of equipment the party carried the first time, and was shocked that some lugged around 400+ pounds of armor and stuff, with extra full plate mails in their backpacks. I had them drop all the excess. The module sucked so we cut it short. 
• "Der Streuner Soll Sterben" ("he Rogue shall Die), level 4-8, nary a recollection of details other than of the undertaker who had entirely black skin, and that is was quite OK.
• "In den Fängen des Dämons" (In the Demon's Clutches), level 5-10 - this had a great scene with the wizard casting an illusion, and a nice cupboard of magic potions. Overall this was fun. 
• "Der Strom des Verderbens" (River of Doom), level 5-10. First PC death due an instant-death critical hit to Dieter's character by an Ogre. Otherwise so-so. 
• "Zug Durch das Nebelmoor" (Trail through the Mistmoor), level 1-3, this was fun, with an annyoing Kobold. It worked even though it was for a much lower level range, as it was not focused on combat, and DSA characters were less crazy at higher levels than D&D ones.
• "Die Verschwörung von Gareth" (The Conspiracy of Gareth), level 7-12, a medieval tourney.
• "Die Göttin der Amazonen" (Goddess of the Amazons), level 7-12. This was OK.
• "Die Fahrt der Korisande" (Journey of the Korisande), level 9-13. 
• "Der Wolf von Winhall" (The Wolf of Winhall), level 10-14, we played this at school, in a project week. Dieter's fighter Quintus cought Lycanthrophy and nearly would have been burned at the cross.
• "Verschollen in Al'Anfa" (Lost in Al'Anfa), level 10-14. A puzzle dungeon, with was entertaining, with a nasty twist at the end.

There was a German fanzine called "Fantasywelt" (Fanatsy World), that included D&D adventures which I converted to play with DSA. As I recall, we played the following adventures, ther first 4 were of the "Shadow" story cycle:

• # 4 "Der Priester des Chaos"(Priest of Chaos)
• #6 "Das Geheimnis des Silbernen Drachen" (Secret of the Silver Dragon)
• # 8 "Der Schattenwald" (Shadow Forest)
• #10 "In den Klauen des Schattens" (In the Claws of the Shadow). This ones I remember most clearly as it had great imagy of a shadow plane.
• #11 "Mutter der Skorpione" (Mother of Scorpions). This was an Arabian-Nights themed adventure that I extended a bit. Drasula, the evil wizardress escaped, and I wrote a sequel for it, "The Manticor's Trail".

Because there still were not enough adventures to keep up with our teenage spare time, So I wrote some myself. 

• A short overland travel adventure contained a scene with an ogre out of the introductory booklet turned into playabel content. I even sent in to the publisher, with hopes but of course no chances to this being used  in a publication. Since that was the handwritten original, I have no copy.
• "Die Spur des Manticor"(The Manticor's Trail) A continuation of the Fantasyworld desert adventure Mother of Scorpions with the same protagonist wizardress; memorable is a wizard duel between her and Madruk (which he unfortunately lost), the players getting captured and Dieter managing to hide a magical ring in spite of being stripped. They eventually escaped, won their equipment back and succeeded. 
• "Die Schwarze Perle" (The Black Pearl), set in the swamps near Havena. I vividly recall pacing on the upper floor of an exhibition space on a summer day, , thinking through the story, while my parents were putting up paintings for an exhibition, Unfortunately, while the thinking up was fun, this played boringly.
• A wild goose chase around the continent of Aventurien with several short scenes, Dieter guessed right at the start this would end up in the Aventurien in the Cyclop Islands, but they still needed to follow the whole sequence of clues to learn where exactly.
• "Der Fluch des Vampirs" (Curse of the Vampire) a vampire adventure with a castle ruin in the fog, faces at the window at night. Madruk nearly died, and the characters had a surprisingly hard time with skeletons that shot at them from a guard tower. This was great fun, and atmospheric. 
• A Puzzle-Dungeon, that had an actuall puzzle gimmick as a hand-out. The PCs ended up in an ancient dungeon complex and had to solve a number of riddles to figure out the exit password. This also was fun, although the players peeked in my notes when I went to the bathroom because one of the riddles was too hard. 
• A fight against a bandit gang in their camp, unnamed. One of the bandits, a huge bloke with a two handed maul was named "Hänschen" (litte Hans) and terrified the players. Many of the bandits were written to match to the pewter figurines we had bought at Games Workshop in the UK.
• The party eventually received a fiefdom, it may have been that won it by defeating an evil mage and his dragon [fragment]. This of course let to adventure set there.
• "Das Gemeinnis des Klosters" (The Secret of the Monastery), level 12-16 (?) (1989)  A monastery adventure for higher levels, where an evil minotaur good was to be summoned threatening to trash not only thier fiefdom. Among other things, the treasure included a magical gatling gun transported in a coffin (I had seen too many spaghetti westerns). I also learned that you can overdo the prep on boring mundane details like sleep schedules for the monastery. The level ranges are a bit mysterious in retrospect (it variously says it is for level 2-4, 2-5, 2-6, 12-16,). This was played towards the end of out DSA time, so it cannot have been low level, at this stage the characters must have been above 10th level. 

I also wrote the "Bierabenteuer" (Beer Adventure, this link is a polished version that others could run), on a school trip with our class, which was played with Dieter and another classmate, Michael, not with the main characters. The original notes wer lost, but here is an ad-hoc recreation early on I made to play it with someone on a train ride to introduce them to RPGs, and here is a later sketch, where details differ as this was also from memory, Similarly, my bother and I made and played side adventures with our friend Stefan while we were visiting the UK with a hostess family for a few weeks. The Palace of the Ice Witch for 2 adventurers of level 1-3 may have been from then (sporting snow wolves, an ice devil hating the witch, ice-kobolds, an ice dragon, ice gargoyles, and the ice witch/queen herself). 

"Nedime, die Tochter des Kalifen" (Nedime, daughter of the Caliph), a level 1-4 was solo adventure I played left an impressions from the layout of the house around a central courtyard. I also read/played "Borbarads Fluch" another solo, but it was a sore disappointment, because it was a scifi mashup with a spaceship and no Borbarad to be seen, rather than a cool adventure to meet Borbarad, the bad guy behind Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen und Die Sieben Magischen Kelche.  I also bought "Das Große Donnersturm Rennen" (The great Thunderstorm Race), an interestign adventure about a horse race, but we were off to playing D&D by then and never played it. 

At the end we started to convert D&D adventures from old Dungeon Magazine issues, as they had a lot of cool monsters and settings. Among them were

• Out of the Ashes, issue #17, from May/June 1989, levels 8-12, a red dragon in a dungeon in a overing crystal, I recall Madruk negotiating with the dragon in a separate room. 
• The hunt in Great Allindel, issue #17, levels 4-7, I remember the forest adventure part of this, which was quite nice. We also played The Pit from the same issue, with my brother as GM, but used Midgard rules.
• The Dark Conventicle, issue #11, levels 8-12, with an unfun witch hunter NPC I added, which taught me to not overshadow the PCs with powerful DM pet NPCs. We also played The Black Heart of Ulom from this one, again run with Midgard by my brother. I think this was one of the very last ones we played with DSA.

Towards the end I started tweaking the rules more and more too, using d20+mod to beat 20 or an opposed roll as a resolution mechanic. We started to experiment with other systems, like Midgard, that Ligi introduced, and Ligi mastered Call of Cthulhu's  Corbitt House for us, also introducing us to Call of Cthulhu that his group played. We joined them in a vacation retreat, that happend to be in the same village in the Black Forest as our vacation house. We also started MEPS/Rolemaster that my classmate Thomas had the rulesbooks for, and played a Rolemaster campaign in Middle Earth, and a few sessions of rolemaster Mythic Greece. Because I was of tired of converting D&D monsters, we started playing D&D with Dungeon Adventures outright.

That began with Ancient Blood from Dungeon #20, together with serveral people from Ligi's group, Ligi, Harner, Mehler, which was a fantastic kick-off and a lot of fun. By then my brother was in the US for an student year, and I was doing civil service and moved into my uncle's flat in Freiburg, where we played laying out the dungeon plans with paper strips on the carpted floor. Harner's character got maimed by the blob behind the crevice. Lots of memories of that one. Afterwards, we tried to play Tomb of Horrors, and Markus also joined in, as did one of Dieter's freinds, Kauff. But that was so tedious that we broke off. The most fun part was during a small prequel I ran, an underwater adventure where the party was trying to learn the background poem and its clues from a marid: Mehler cast lightning bolt with his fresh-minted 10th level wizard, and died in the resulting-self centered electroball. 

There were too many other things going on, Thomas ran Rolemaster in Middle Earth, playing fantastically stupid orcs and handing Grond, Melkor's hammer to my character, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. We also tried Shadowrun, run by Oliver, one of Marc's friends who went to another school, in his fathers house, and played more Call of Cthulhu. The DSA era had ended, and then the civil service eventually ended too, and we all moved to different places to study and my youth ended with it. 

Questions & Answers from a year of Role-Playing Games Stack Exchange

I spent a year of spare time asking and answering questions on Role Playing Games Stack Exchange. 

You can filter for my most upvoted questions and answers on the site. But the most upvoted ones are not the most interesting ones. This has several reasons.    

Questions

I found asking questions on SE difficult. A few active members use their interpretation of the site policies to limit what questions should be allowed, mainly questions about concrete social problems you encounter in play, or simple rules questions that can have a "right" answer. Everything else can easily get downvoted or closed, and once closed, nobody can answer them. I believe this is primarily out of concern that the site would devolve into a low quality discussion forum experience otherwise. So the questions I found most interesting often did not survive. 

Sometimes someone would claim I had a "X-Y problem", and did not understand my problem. While this can be well-meaning, I felt it was horribly patronizing to insist I did not know what question I was interested in, even after I confirmed I did indeed want to ask that question, not another one they wanted to rather answer, or felt more able to.  

Shutting down questions is easy, all it needs are five votes. You can pick your reason from "opinion-based", "off-topic", "needs focus" or "duplicate", and it is very hard to formulate a question that cannot be argued to run afoul one of the them if someone puts their mind to it. Even if it does not, that does not stop people from voting to close. Duplicate is maybe the most problematic, as anyone with a gold badge for the game in question can single-handedly close questions as duplicates. Even if the question later gets re-opened, that marks it as "not well-received" for badge achievement.

I found that questions about the history of the game, worked to avoid closure. They often were intially greeted with downvotes as "mere curiosity" questions, but in the end most had high positive scores from the wider community. Questions about social issues in our game (mostly DM management) were generally well received. And question on how to interpret certain game features like spells or optimization questions about feats, but of course, I could have answered those myself. 

Sharing Research.  These were some of my earliest questions, self-answering for sharing research work. Shared-research questions were mostly closed or forced through "workshopping", even though they were real problems I had had, and from my perspective were more useful than rules question you can solve in 2 minutes by reading the rulebook, because they would have saved someone else those hours or days of work. It was not a good experience, even if the people who did it meant well.

• Scary Monsters that deal long-term handicaps Closed.
• Handling monsters more deadly than their CR Closed before getting reopened.
• By what in-game logic is there no market for Wizard spells? Closed. 
  
• Spells affecting an opponent permanently Closed. @Someone_evil managed to get a nice answer in before that. Unfortunately, I cannot award bounties on closed questions.

Clarifying fundamental rules and rules interpretation concepts. Questions that asked about general rules were ill received by those who wanted a specific problem you had run into during a game session,. Their position was one should never ask in general, claiming one cannot answer usefully in general. That's of course nonsense. It would be more useful to have general guidance, than only having answers for specific little situations. I'd often start out with several downvotes. At least, if the question somehow survived and was not permanently shut down by closure, it often got solidly positive votes. 

• Are names of game features rules text? You'd think this is not a problem question. Think again.
• What is the source of the "There are no hidden rules" principle?
• What is the souce for "D&D is not a physics simulation"? 
• Source for "everyday things behave as expected"? Closed. Heavy downvotes. 
• Does Lore count as Rules-as-Written? 
• When is an object a magic item?
• Does "item" include creatures?
• Distances through portals
• What is a game feature?
• What is Energy in 5e? 

Statistics questions to help with optimization, evaluating how strong something is for game balance. These met with heavy opposition, users claiming such statistics are not useful, you only can speak about a specific situation or play group and never generalize. Individual experience from years of play, in-depth statistical analysis or surveys would not be not good enough for answers, and hence the questions were closed as opinion-based. 

• Average Number of Encounters per day  Closed as "opinion-based", much later reopened. In my mind, this is my best Q&A, looking at it from many angles, with lots of supporting evidence. 
• Average Damage per Attack for Monsters by CR
• Average Damage Output for PCs by level
• Net Effect of Advantage & Disadvantage Closed as "Duplicate".
• Time it takes in-game to get to level 20
• What is better: per short rest or proficiency bonus times? 
• What deals more damage, +1 to damage or +1 to to hit? Eventually I self answered to get an overview over the level range. The question survived because you also could answer it  in a mathematically airtight way, by only comparing ACs with to-hits, which of course has limited practical use for deciding which of the two to put on masterwork weapons in general. 

Based on our campaign. These fit the "I have a concrete problem from play" pattern.

• Is Gloom Stalker Overpowered? My most viewed question.
• How to deal with advanced "remote control" tactics in dungeons? 
• As a DM, how do you avoid getting tired of the monsters always losing?  
• How does Rod of Rulership work?
• How can we help our DM to keep things moving?
• How to manage minions?
• What can spells in a Shield Guardian target?
• Can you force your way into Rope Trick? Can a Large creature enter? Can you cast it mid-air?
• How far from Undermountain to Skullport?

Individual Spells. In reality due to voting, SE is a popularity contest, not a way to determine objective truth. Votes are opinions, and often are as much about what people like, as they are about what is technically correct. In many cases when there is no clear-cut rules answer, what you go to SE for is to get a feeling what people vote for and what seems to be common consensus of how to handle it best. That is how we went there first. That is, ironically, the value for us was mostly to get others opinions, exactly the thing that the purists claim has no place on the site. 

• Does Banishment banish equipment? My second most downvotes, a valid, disliked question. 
• Bigby's Hand vs Telekinesis
• Reliable Non-Concentration spells for Contingency the list is super short, to my surprise
• Using Invisible Stalker summons to get around anti-Divination magic It works
• What level does the sleep spell stop being effective? 
• Teleport objects needed, and scrying, bombing with Freezing Sphere,
• Phantom Steed equipment, number of riders, moving after ending
• Max damage deliverable in a day with Glyph of Warding on a Demiplane

Equipment

• Normal spellbooks
• Pony vs Mule Why pay extra for non-performance?

Dealing with Shitty Rules.  These are questions where the rule is bad, so how to go about it? As that question would be opinion based, you cannot ask for that directly, you can only ask for how the rules work, and hope someone answers based on experience, explains the rule is shitty and what you could do. 

• Creature Space in Combat: I think it is preposterous that creatures need to jump off a boat or carpet, just because combat starts. How is a creature's space defined?  Can you chose to not participate in combat? Creatures fitting on a carpet of flying in combat -- the best solution under the rules is to declare creatures that do not want to fight efficiently can share the space. similar to allow someone to not participate. Same thing, in a boat. 
• Souls. Is there a difference between soul and spirit?,  Where do souls go after death and are they free to be raised?  Raising souls from hades, and from the a night hag's nightmare haunting. Does Revivify work on trapped souls? @trish found an answer. Can you revive a specter? Nope. 
• Expertise. How to justify Expertise [Closed], What does it mean to break bounded accuracy? 
• Are Pixies overpowered at CR 1/4? I still don't get how anyone can defend they are not. 

Answers 

If you answer an old question, you get much fewer eyeballs. The bulk of people using the site do so by looking up common, very old questions found via web searches. Those already have answers, often many of them, and often also highly upvoted and accepted ones. As answers are by default sorted with the accepted answer pinned on top, and then in order of votes, if you add one more answer without votes it will be way, way down on the page. Most people won't even look at it. And if it is not one of these evergreen questions, likely nobody is looking at it at all. So getting any votes for answers to these old questions is hard. My early answers were to those questions, for example about spells like contingency, about what an object or creature is, or about portals and glyph of warding, and often stuck at 0 or few votes.

I also initially answered unanswered old questions that irked my OCD of making everything neat. Because there was little interest in them or they did not have a clear-cut answer, they did not get a lot of votes, either. 

Later I switched to answering new questions. These get more eyballs and engagement, as the small group of active, daily users is looking at this category. However, most of the obvious questions für D&D 5e have long been asked, so these were mostly Homebrew Reviews, obscure rules corner cases,  or 3.5, Pathfinder which I stopped playing long ago and Pathfinder 2, which I never played (but had good online rules books). This worked a lot better if you care about votes and had the nice effect that I learned about other games from looking up what the rules said. 

The most popular are answers that deal with social interactions, because everyone can relate to them and have an opinion on them. These often get [Good Answer] badges for more than 25 votes. Of course, positive feedback instead of nothing felt good, too. 

Also successful are simple, clear rules answers, a short rules quote with some explanation, so it fits on one screen. These answers were successful in spite of being boring -- or maybe especially for being so, because then they are easy to verify as correct. These often become the single, accepted answer. 

Sometimes answers got downvoted to a negative score because people did not like them even when they were technically correct, or because they were answers to questions some highly active people want to close instead of getting answered, and so they downvoted to punish you for answering, independent of how correct or good the answer is. 

Because of these effects, sorting answers by vote is not a great way to find interesting answers. And because this site here is mine, here is a list that reflects my take on the most interesting or memorable answers (out of the 888 total answers I posted at the time I wrote this):

DM Techniques -- the core of DMing. Not game system specific, although there may be some influence. 

• Using random encounters @nitsua60 with a great answer, gifted us bounties.
• Creating the story with the players, instead of railroading 
• Using a clock to drive the action 
• Implementing a creature with a vulnerable point with 2 different, high scoring answers
• How to run aerial combat two bounties, from @linksassin and @lfusaso
• Allowing it once, to have a fast flowing game without setting expoitable precendent
• Curb munchkinism expoiting the rules, use real-world sense for mundane interactions
• Big treasures, and how to keep the game interersting afterwards
• DM not bound by PC mechanics in building dungeons and NPCs

Fundamental Rule / Term Defintions. Creature and object definition show up all the time in interpreting rules. I refined these answers as I learned more. 

• What is a creature, is a soul a creature, and how to deal with displaced souls for effects that work on creatures -- will you reach a displaced soul with sending, Magic Jar.
• Object, composed object, containers as objects, object sizes, object weight , are liquids objects?

Real-world medieval history and game economy. These are among the most interesting to research, as you learn something about the real world.

• Without a magic item economy, what is gold for? 
• Value of a gold piece
• Poison damage per gp 
• How much does it cost to manufacture a conductor stone?
• Roads, castles, cost of 
• Lifestyle Expenses
• Size of Settlements
• Mailed letters 
• Barrel fitting (@trish made a fantastic answer)
• Disinfectants
• Spellbook replacement, number of spells per spellbook, 
• Arrow and Bolt sizes vs Forcecage
• Siege weapon rate of fire

Adjudicating fundamentally murky or flawed areas in the rules. There are parts of the rules that are not well designed, like the magic item rarity to power or sensible prices, or the rules about creature space in combat.

• Magic item rarity
• Does the Bugbears "Sneaky" trait always apply? Initially exploring the space rules in combat. 
• Wild Shape and Rot Grubs? Parasites
• Is alcoholism a curable disease? Friendly co-answering with @Kirt
• Travel speed and rest, and another one on Phantom Steed
• Pulling an object from your backpack with a simple object interaction
• Area of effect of ongoing spell effects, using the example of casting a wall of force into them.
• Actions Outside of Combat
• Are carried creatures equipment?, Carrying and grappling
• Running blindly
• Monster weapons with special effects
• Bonus Action spells Core rules say 1 cantrip, Xanathar changes it to cantrips
• Look of a spell scroll, the correct answer by the rules. @nautarch assigned a 500 bounty, then retracted it. Example of where people dislike the rule, and therefore dislike the answer telling them what the rule says. 
• Specific beats general there are a few questions where my answer was up against one by @thomasmarkov. He can be very convincing, so these were always interesting. This one went to me.

Sharing useful experience on PC tactics and shenanigans

• How do you survive level 1 as a wizard? Good general wizard know-how.
• How to defend allies as a Fighter at level 1? Ditto.
• What countermeasures protect against Power Word Kill?
• How do I make an ageless warlock? All the different ways to become immortal in the game.
• Moving 10,000 gp of gold A lot of calculations and Floating Disk
• Getting a dragon Answered three different ways, none downvoted.
• Helping a weak, low level group The downvotes are bunk. These methods work.
• Whats the best big gun 3rd level spell? Sharing play stats

Game History

• In which editions of D&D have druids been able to Wild Shape into owlbears? This got a 500 bounty by SE's top contributor, @KRyan. In which editions can you breed in animal form? is similar, somehow people are curious about how wild shape changed over time.
• Shield of the Hidden Lord This was a long-unanswered one, the last one standing. I contacted the published author, and they were kind and did answer! @consus gifted 50 rep to it.

Optimization and Balance. These questions look at the game mechanics and expected outcomes for optimal results, and often took a lot of work and number crunching. Answering them drove some of my own questions in turn.

• Most Damage with a 17th level Fighter This was the first min-max question for me, and I spent days refining it in friendly collaborative back and forth with @goodguy5 who had the other answer, which was a nice experience, and learned a lot about optimization math. Icing on the cake was that @someone_evil ran a Monte-Carlo simulation, improving the answer further.
• Nerfing Sharpshooter Exploration of the mathemetical impact of sharpshooter, took days
• Statistically, when should you wait to use Sneak Attack on a second attack with advantage? Impact of criticals, crit ranges, advantage, disadvantage.  Lots of work.
• Stacking AC bonuses made me learn about rules for combining game effects. 
• How to increase AC over 20 without magic items is a good example for the late answer effect. The very old, accepted answer has a lower AC, fewer methods, and many times the votes.
• Does the number of spells at a Wizard's disposal affect game balance?

Statistics. These came out of the optimization questions, as you need to make assumptions about hit rates, number of encounters (assuming short rests in between), etc. 

• Is there an accepted likelihood of hitting that is consistent across tiers, and how has it been determined? Useful for optimization questions, looking at this from various angles. Establishes 65% hit rate without magic weapons. 
• Surviving without Sleep against Nightmare After original ballparking, followed @Someone_evil's lead and spent a couple hours to program a simulation to work it out
• Average monster AC per CR based on all the work here but somewhat plain
• Most often used languages A lot of list intersecting on the command line for this one. But this was yet not the best answer to the question!

Glyph of Warding and Portals. Glyph breaks how normal spellcasting works. I tagged questions with glyph for the [Taxonomist] badge, but accidentally flooded the "front page" doing so. The tag was removed for [spell][trap], which does not capture these uses of glyph. I later created a tag for [portals]. which has been used independently, and in the end got there. 

• Combining Contingency and Glyph, Glyph to summon demons, glyph compared to symbol,  Glyph and storable spells, triggering out of a  Portable Hole, 
• Portable hole, locating portals with locate object, using demiplane as a transport, contact through portals, nature of pocket dimensions.

Individual Spells

• Circumstances for Contingency This was one of my very first answers, adressing the myriad questions associated with that spell, and the friendly reception by @jack made a big difference 
• Teleport and Initiative
• Unseen Servant doing the dishes. targeting
• Find Familiar. I answered over 50 questions about this spell
• Imprisonment Minimus Containment - so cute!
• Identify vs artifacts still works...
• Astral Projection vs Plane Shift
• Clairvoyance
• Resilient Sphere vs teleportation
• Wristpocket and Arcane Abeyance This one got a 200 bounty from @thomasmarkov
• Modenkainen's Sword, making a case for discovery vs the fetish for perfect balance
• Shield spell not stacking with shield. My most downvoted answer, as I wrote this at -12. I think it is technically correct, it makes narrative sense, and it also is wiser for play balance. But people clearly do want to stack their shield and the spell.

Helping others. There were several cases where a question got shut down because someone does not know how to answer it themselves, and therefore deems it unanswerable, or pressures the asker to ask a question they rather would answer.

• What percentage of Call of Cthulhu characters start drowning on average? This is a prime example. It took me a reading of all the relevant new CoC rules and a lot of number crunching to help. Others just told him it's a stupid question, but he had been told so and it still was important to him. This got me a bounty of 300. I also answered another question for him for another 400.

Other Odds and Ends

• Council Voting in Waterdeep this lore qeustion meant poring over lots of old books from first, second, third, and fourth edition, as 5th does not have a lot. 
• College of Poems bard One of the many homebrew reviews. I had fun answering in rhyme. @shadowranger, with the accepted highly-voted answer was a great sport and defended it.
• Spells known and Wizards This one is memorable because @non_novelist granted a 500 point bounty on it. Unfortunately, he could not deal with how the stack was run, and got banned.
• Using alternate ability scores for attack just a useful collection.

How Stupid is the Monster?

It is very hard to correctly play a monster that has a much higher intelligence than you, the DM. But it should be possible to correctly play a monster that is more stupid than a normal human. Unfortunately the game does not provide guidance on what the different ability scores translate to, but we can try to construct some benchmarks based on real world animals and their mental capabilities, and the intelligence scores assigned to their in-game beast versions. Here is our informal intelligence checklist:

• Can it remember things out of sight?
• Can it understand quantities or count?
• Can it understand cause and effect?
• Can it use tools?
• Can it create tools?

• Can it learn by experimenting?
• Can it imitate others to learn?
• Can it transfer learned concepts to new problems?

• Can it cooperate with others to achieve goals?
• Can it use gestures or words to communicate?
• Can it speak a language? 

• Can it understand the intentions or mind of others?
• Can it practice and suspect deception?

• Can it form short term plans?
• Can it form long-term plans?

Int	Example Monster (Monster Manual)	Capabilities
1	Vermin: Insects,Spiders, Crustaceans, Oozes, Slimes, Sharks	The minimal value (there are no creaturs with Intelligence 0). These creatures act purely on instinct, with no reasoning whatsoever. They will stupidly attack, or maybe if the opponent seems to be large, try to flee. There is no learning.
2	"Normal" Animal: rat, bat, deer, boar, bear, cattle, eagle, hyena, pony, owl, horse etc.	These animals are driven by instinct and form no long term plans or reasoning, but they can with patience be thaught certain tricks, and can get to trust a keeper. There is slow learning, of very simple things, and no transfer outside of the exact thing that is learned. A rat for example, can learn to push a button for food.
3	"Smart" Animal: felines and dogs (cat, panther, tiger, lion, wolf, mastiff, hyena), killer whale, octopus, elephant, Zombie	This is theoretically the minimum a player character could roll, so the minimum range for a functioning human, although I think it would be very hard to have a functioning PC that is that dumb, if you play it that dumb - for example, these are typically too stupid to use language or tools, which pretty much makes a character unplayable.  These animals are smart enough to work out simple cause and effect, like how to open a door, and they can coordinate with each other when fighting a common foe. They can remember things that are out of sight, short term, but use no tools. They have no own language.
4	"Monkey" Level Baboon, Velociraptor, Giant Octopus and Weasel	These animals are smart enough to not feel entirely like animals any more. They can use simple tools, work together, use rudimentary language and can be outright cunning.
5	"Ape" Level  Wyvern, Ogre, Hill Giant, Mimic, Girallon	Here we are leaving the level of animal intelligence for good, and get into the lowest level of thinking, stone-dumb humanoids with the ability to reason. They can imitate others, learning by observation. Ogre and hill giant at least already make regular use of simple tools, and have a spoken language in giant. In general, these creatures are unable to grasp any complex concept, cannot be reasoned with based on any longer term considerations beyond their immediate desires, are easy to fool and deceive, and act stupidly. (Given how human-like they are in both published modules and folklore, the Ogre and Hill Giant would better be placed at Int 6 than 5).
6	"Bestial Human" level Ape, Boggle, Ettin, Gnoll, Minotaur, Quaggoth, Displacer Beast, Hell Hound, Mummy, Skeleton, Troglodytes	Thinking beings with strong beast-likes traits or origin that still come though in their behaviour, making them less than human.They use tools normally, can speak and understand a language, and coordinate actions.They still struggle to consider other's intentions and are somewhat easily deceived. These creatures can aleady be reasoned with based upon promises of future rewards, but are not smart enough to formulate their own long-term plans, at best a few days ahead. They may form tribes or groups, but not societies. (Apes are too high at 6, considering that real world apes do not have full language and very limited tool use  They should be Int 5)
7	"Simpleton" level Bullywug, Ghoul, Lizardfolk, Orc, Troll, Winter Wolf, Worg	These creatures can be intelligent enough to form societies. The can speak multiple languages, can use equipment,  can decieve and lie, can suspect deception, but still may be duped quite easily. They can formulate simple longer term goals. At this level, creatures start to become so intelligent that the monster manual rather considers their goals, customs and society, than talking about intelligence directly. Orcs certainly are also smart enough to craft items.
8	"Dumb" level PC baseline, Cyclops, Bugbear, Yeti, Kobold, Magmin, Thri-Kreen	This is the lowest a point-buy PC will get on intelligence, so probably a good number for a slightly dumb character. They can craft, trade, lie,  learn, imitate, speak several languages, suspect deceit and form long-term plans, but they just do it a little less well and have a bit of difficulty with it. Clearly not the brightest, still somewhat easily manipulated.

See also: https://dmdave.com/monster-abilities-intelligence/

Animal Intelligence

Outside of the game intelligence is defined as

The ability to learn, reason, think abstractly, and adapt to new situations. 

It typically is measured by using tests.  Tests used to assess intelligence in animals are:

1. Mirror self-recognition: This test is used to assess whether an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror. 

2. Problem-solving tasks: These tasks involve presenting an animal with a problem that it must solve in order to obtain a reward. Examples of problem-solving tasks include the use of tools to retrieve food or the ability to find food in a maze.

3. Memory tasks: These tasks involve presenting an animal with a stimulus and then measuring its ability to remember the stimulus after a delay. For example, an animal might be shown the location of food and then be required to remember the location after a period of time has passed.

4. Communication tasks: These tasks involve measuring an animal's ability to communicate with humans or other animals through the use of vocalizations, gestures, or other means.

5. Social cognition tasks: These tasks involve measuring an animal's ability to understand and respond to the social cues and behaviors of other animals. For example, an animal might be tested on its ability to follow the gaze of another animal or to recognize the facial expressions of other animals.

From Synapsida: Physical intelligence refers to the ability to understand concepts of space, quantity, and causality. As an example for spacial intelligence (including remembering things out of sight), if I place a piece of food under a cup on a table, and then rotate the table 180 degrees, can you remember which cup the food is under? For quantity, can I tell that five is better than four of something -- and how large do the numbers need to be before I cannot any more? Causal intelligence includes tool use.

Social intelligence deals with how creatures relate with one another. Tests look at whether the creature can learn by imitating others, whether it can understand gestural communication, such as pointing, and whether they can understand the intentions of others. At a higher level come constructs like undertanding works and language.

Animal Quotes for Cats, Dogs (Int 3)

• Cats have object permanence recognition, awareness of objects that aren't directly visible. Cats are able to hold an object in mind and reason where it may be. 
• Cats learn by observation and doing. Examples include opening doors, ringing bells and turning on light switches.
• Dogs readily learn the names of objects and can retrieve an item from among many when given its name.
• Dogs are able to interpret phrases such as "fetch the sock" by its component words (rather than considering its utterance to be a single word). This performance is comparable to that of 3-year-old humans.
• Dogs feel emotions like jealousy and anticipation.
• Dogs learn by making inferences in a similar way as children.
• Dogs have the ability to train themselves and learn from watching other dogs.
• Dogs demonstrate a theory of mind by engaging in deception (considering what another creature is thinking or wants).

Animal Quotes for Monkeys (Int 4)

• Baboons have been found to decipher elements of language, understanding words in a sequence.
• Baboons are unable to learn by imitating a human experimenter.
• Baboons are better than the apes in following the gaze of humans. Perhaps, since they live in large groups, social intelligence is more important to baboons.
• Some monkeys failed miserably on tool use, unable to comprehend the idea of reaching for things with sticks. Crab-eating macaques do use basic tools in the wild - they whack crabs with stones to open them.

Animal Quotes for Apes (should be Int 5)

• Do as well as 2-year old children on measures of 'physical' intelligence. Children were able to beat them on the social tasks. 
• Simple tools are used: Chimpanzees “fish” for termites and ants with probes made of sticks or vines. They crack nuts with stones, roots, and wood as hammers or anvils, and use a handful of folded leaves or moss to drink water. Sticks are used to inspect dead snakes or other unfamiliar objects that might be dangerous. Leaves are used in wiping the mouth or soiled body parts.
• Younger animals learn tool-using behaviours from their elders.
• Chimpanzees can use sign language or languages based on the display of tokens or pictorial symbols.
• Chimps are incredibly selfish by human standards, and have a hard time cooperating to solve a problem.

Monster Intelligence

Example monster quotes for Int 3

Zombie

The zombie in particular seems more stupid than a smart animal, but their disregard of self-preservation may be due to their undead nature. It might still figure out how to open a door, eventually. 

• Zombies take the most direct route to any foe, unable to comprehend obstacles, tactics, or dangerous terrain. A zombie might stumble into a fast-flowing river to reach foes on a far shore, clawing at the surface as it is battered against rocks and destroyed. To reach a foe below it, a zombie might step out of an open window. Zombies stumble through roaring infernos, into pools of acid, and across fields littered with caltrops without hesitation.
• A zombie can follow simple orders and distinguish friends from foes, but its ability to reason is limited to shambling in whatever direction it is pointed, pummeling any enemy in its path. A zombie armed with a weapon uses it, but the zombie won't retrieve a dropped weapon or other tool until told to do so.

Example monster quotes for Int 5

Ogre

• Few ogres can count to ten, even with their fingers in front of them. Most speak only a rudimentary form of Giant and know a smattering of Common words.
• Ogres believe what they are told and are easy to fool or confuse, but they break things they don't understand. Silver-tongued tricksters who test their talents on these savages typically end up eating their eloquent words-and then being eaten in turn.
• Ogres clothe themselves in animal pelts and uproot trees for use as crude tools and weapons. They create stone-tipped javelins for hunting.

Hill Giant

• Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks.
• With no culture of their own, hill giants ape the traditions of creatures they manage to observe for a time before eating them. They don't think about their own size and strength, however. Tribes of hill giants attempting to imitate elves have been known to topple entire forests by trying to live in trees.
• In conversation, hill giants are blunt and direct, and they have little concept of deception. A hill giant might be fooled into running from another giant if a number of villagers cover themselves in blankets and stand on one another's shoulders holding a giant-painted pumpkin head. Reasoning with a hill giant is futile, although clever creatures can sometimes encourage a giant to take actions that benefit them

Example Monster qutoes for Int 6

Skeletons

• Skeletons are able to accomplish a variety of relatively complex tasks.
• Because of their literal interpretation of commands and unwavering obedience, skeletons adapt poorly to changing circumstances.
• A skeleton can fight with weapons and wear armor, can load and fire a catapult or trebuchet, scale a siege ladder, form a shield wall, or dump boiling oil. However, it must receive careful instructions explaining how such tasks are accomplished.
• Skeletons aren't mindless. Rather than break its limbs attempting to batter its way through an iron door, a skeleton tries the handle first. If that doesn't work, it searches for another way through or around the obstacles

Mimic

• Although most mimics have only predatory intelligence, a rare few evolve greater cunning and the ability to carry on simple conversations in Common or Undercommon. Such mimics might allow safe passage through their domains or provide useful information in exchange for food.

Minotaur

• Apart from ambushing creatures that wander into its labyrinth, a minotaur cares little for strategy or tactics.

Troglodyte

• Simpleminded Brutes. Troglodytes have a simple, communal culture devoted almost entirely to procuring food. Too simple to plan more than a few days into the future, troglodytes rely on constant raids and hunting to survive.
• They understand the value of metal weapons and armor, and fight among one another for the right to have such items.

Ettin

• An ettin isn't particularly loyal to its orc handlers, but the orcs can win it over with the promise of food and loot.

Example Monster quotes for Int 7

Bullywug

• Bullywugs overwhelm opponents with superior numbers when they can, but flee from serious threats to search for easier prey.
• Bullywugs introduce themselves with grand-sounding titles, make great shows of bowing and debasing themselves before their superiors, and endlessly vie to win their superiors' favor. A bullywug has two ways to advance among its kind. It can either murder its rivals, though it must take pains to keep its criminal deeds secret, or it can find a treasure or magic item and present it as tribute or a token of obeisance to its liege.
• Captives are dragged before the king or queen - a bullywug of unusually large size - and forced to beg for mercy. Bribes, treasure, and flattery can trick the bullywug ruler into letting its captives go, but not before it tries to impress its "guests" with the majesty of its treasure and its realm

Ghoul

• Whereas ghouls are little more than savage beasts, a ghast is cunning and can inspire a pack of ghouls to follow its commands. [This does not fit the Intelligence given -- savage beasts would be 2, a pack following commands, 3 or 4.]

Winter Wolf

• Winter wolves communicate with one another using growls and barks, but they speak Common and Giant well enough to follow simple conversations

Worg

• Cunning and malevolent, (...) Worgs speak in their own language and Goblin, and a few learn to speak Common as well.

Example Monster quotes for Int 8

Cyclops 

• A cyclops that gains direct benefit from some site of divine power, or which is threatened by a supernatural force or creature, will pay homage as long as the benefit or threat remains.
• Though they are reasonably intelligent, cyclopes live simple, reclusive lives, keeping herds of animals for food. They prefer to dwell alone or in small family groups, lairing in caves, ruins, or rough structures of dry stone construction they build themselves.
• A cyclops lairs within a day's journey of other cyclopes, so that they can meet to trade goods or seek mates. They craft weapons and tools of wood and stone, but will use metal when they can find it. Although cyclopes understand the Giant tongue, they write nothing and speak little, using grunts and gestures for their interactions with each other.
• Cyclopes aren't great thinkers or strategists. Slow to learn and bound to their traditional ways, they find innovation difficult. Although they are a terrifying threat in combat due to their size and strength, they can often be tricked by clever foes.

Kobold

• Kobolds make up for their physical ineptitude with a cleverness for trap making and tunneling.

Magmin

• Magmin: as simple elemental creations, they are oblivious to the harm their native element causes creatures of the Material Plane [this sounds pretty dumb, certainly not int 8, maybe 5].

Human Intelligence

From here on up would be the range of "normal" (that is, point-buy) PC human intelligence. Some of the most well-known tests for human intelligence include the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale to assess intelligence in people of all ages, the Differential Ability Scales (DAS) to measure intelligence in children,  and the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities. All of them test similar things, typically

1. Language:  Vocabulary, the knowledge of word meanings. Similarities, understand and use abstract concepts. Passage Comprehension, understand and interpret written material..
2. Visual: analyze and synthesize visual information. Recognition: recognize and identify familiar objects in pictures. Patterns, for example reproduce a pattern from a choice of component patterns. Spatial, understand spatial relationships, imagine objects in 3D
3. Calculation: perform basic arithmetic operations.
4. Sequencing: infer rules of order and organize items
5. Weights: understand and compare the relative weights of objects.
6. Social: understand and use social conventions.
7. Memory: remember and repeat sentences, lists of word or numbers
8. Processing Speed: quickly and accurately discriminate between similar stimuli, proces auditory or visual information quickly. 

Average Rounds of Combat in 5e

The number of combat rounds has a strong influcence on how costly it is to use an action, for example a spell that produces an effect for a minute, enough to last the whole fight: if the fight only takes three rounds, you will only benefit from it for two rounds. If the fight however takes eight rounds, you get seven rounds of benefit. 

Three rounds is assumed to be standard, because the DMG in the monster building rules (page 278) tells us:

If a monster's damage output varies from round to round, calculate its damage output each round for the first three rounds of combat, and take the average

And on p.281, in the Monster Features section for factoring Regeneration in CR calculations:

Increase the monster's effective hit points by 3 x the number of hit points the monster regenerates each round. 

Both indicate that the game seems to expect combat to take three rounds. 

More importantly, this length is also supported by the amount of damage characters deal against the hit points of a an appropriate monster: a group of four would reduce such a monster to 0 hits in about three rounds.  

A higher end of five rounds is based on empirical data at one specific table.

You often do not attack every round in every fight when you spending time to manoever or take cover, so the fight duration in rounds might increase, but the number of rounds where you fully attack may not. This would make for longer combat, but in a way that is not material for resource use math. 

In my experience, larger and more deadly battles take longer, sometimes much longer, as opponents not only move around and jockey for cover, but as there are many more opponents and hit points to grind down, while small fights or fights against weaker opponents are over even faster. 

In reality you will tend to have fewer, deadlier encounters than the DMG guidance suggests. Instead of 5 or so medium combats, you end up with only three deadly ones per day, sometimes even only a single really huge monster-ball battle. This will lead to longer combat in the wild than what the DMG math implies. 

For these reasons, I think four rounds per combat encounter is a better average than three. 

Damage per round per Character level in D&D 5e

For monsters, we have the guidance of how much damage they deal on average in a round based on their CR from the DMG on page 274. In contrast, there is no such explicit guidance for expected PC damage output per round and level.

You can differentiate between average damage (without taking into account the probablity to hit, just the damage die on a hit, including chances to roll a critical, which is the damage number given for the monsters), and expected damage that factors in the probablilty to hit against a typical opponent AC. Both scale together, as the average probablity to hit remains about 65% across all levels without magic weapons. In the end is the expected damage that matters, so  this is what we look at here. 

Expected Damage based on DMG combat guidance  

One idea is to base this on the expected combat duration. The rules give monster hit points for a monster of a given challenge rating and XP value (page 274, DMG).  Encounters for any given level have XP guidance, which we can use to pick an appropriate single monster -- typically one of a CR matching the average character level for medium encounters, or of a CR one or two higher for hard ones.² As we know how many hit points such a monster has, we can deduce how much damage each character must deal per round to kill it in a given number of rounds.

Expected Damage based on actual builds

The other idea is to do this empirically: build various characters, and see how much damage they consistently can put out each round. 

A simple approximation for damage per hit with this approach would be to assume  that characters start start with +3 primary ability bonus and max that with ability score increases every four levels, and that they wield a weapon that deals 1d10 damage (either two handed verstatile weapons, or the average of higher damage d12 or 2d6 and lower damage d8 weapons typically used; few characters need to stoop to using d6 weapons).This results in average damage of 10 points per attack across the first ten levels, slightly lower (9 damage) during the first three levels of the range, and slightly higer (11 damage) during the last three, due to the increasing combat ability bonus. This translates into about 6-7 expected points of damage per attack, and once characters get multiple attacks, a multiple of that. 

However, actual damage output output can vary wildly, both by character build, and by class -- some like wizard, rogue or paladin excel at nova-damage, pouring limited resources into big effects, others like fighter or barbarian are strong on sustained damage over time. 

A more realisistic approximation therefore takes into accounts race and class abilities. The following chart summarizes the findings:

Medium and Hard refer to a Medium or Hard encounter four a group of 4 PCs. The Medium encounter asssumes a monster of the same CR as the average character level, the Hard encounter assumes a monster of one CR higher than the average character level.

The number 3 and number 4 refer to three or four rounds of combat per encounter. Three rounds is assumed to be standard, because the DMG in the monster building rules (page 278) tells us:

If a monster's damage output varies from round to round, calculate its damage output each round for the first three rounds of combat, and take the average

Four rounds is based on empirical data at one specific table.

The Bottom 25%, Mid 50% and Top 75% in contrast to this are the quartile averages from the Optimists' Guide to D&D 5E Damage by Class. This is averaging damage per level for 360 different builds in 13 classes and 48 subclasses. While it has to make some assumptions about hit rates and monster AC per level, those are well established. This approach is orthogonal the first in that the calculations in Optimist do not depend on rounds per encounter, so it provides a great reality check. For the Mid 50% (average PCs) and Top 25% (high damage PCs), the graphic also provides a trend line with associated formula to estimate the approximate damage per level x.

Lastly, the 7 builds line is from seven damage-focused builds without Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter (Champion and Battlemaster Fighter, Assassin Rogue, two different Hunter Rangers, Vengeance Paladin, Berserker Barbarian), made to compare to Optimist Guide as a check. 

This assumes the same stat progression as in the simple approximation above, four combat rounds and five encounters per day to factor in damage from limited resources like spell slots, and short rest between fights. The battlemaster uses superiority dice for improved damage contribution from to hit, a rogue is assumed to be able to sneak attack, a ranger casts hunters mark the first round, and a paladin is using spell slots to smite each fight if possible. Other than Optimist, we excluded the Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter feats. They are complicated as they influence also the to-hit probablility and can optionally be employed depending on the opponents AC.³

It is unsurprising that it is a bit higher than the average of 90 above-average builds in Optimist, also because those do not as thoroughly include damage from limited use abilities, as far as I can tell. 

Conclusions

• The average fight would take about 3 rounds. Both against Hard and against Medium encounters, the XP based damage from assuming 3 rounds closely matches the average damage output from Optimist.

• If I had to simplify damage per level to a simple rule of thumb, it would be level plus 7 damage for a typical character (add another half level, rounded up, for high damage characters, or subtract it for low damage ones).

• Damage per PC varies significantly, depending on build. You can have nearly a factor of 2 difference between a high damage PC and a low damage one across the entire spectrum of levels.

• Five rounds as an assumption for an average fight would be high. Fights would require damage outputs even below the low end of the Optimist build spectrum to take that long, which seems improbable unless you have a dedicated pacificst party.

• Builds optimized for damage could do a fair bit more than the 3-round combat encounter implies and may be able to end combat faster. The shorter the combat, the less damage the monsters can deal in return. Such groups might be better challenged with Deadly encounters.

Always keep in mind these are merely averages. In any individual fight, the duration can vary greatly from the expected average: it can be over in the first round, or it can drag out for many, many rounds with sides taking cover, jockeying for position, reinforcements coming in and so on; and likewise the damage output per character can vary wildy with the wizard casting fireball one turn, fire bolt the other, the paladin critting one turn with maxium divine smite damage, and missing altoghether the other, an so forth.