I’ll be DMing some more 5e soon and I want to take the opportunity to try some different ways of playing (I’ll post my own suggestions as comments so they can start their own discussion threads). What alternate rules have you tried that you thought worked well? They can be larger changes to the game or little QoL tweaks (though if you can respond to the suggestion with “at this point just play [different game] instead” then that’s probably more than what I’m looking for!)
I’ve adopted the “you get Inspiration whenever you roll a nat 1” idea that the playtest floated for a while and it’s turned out well.
I think that the “official” way of granting inspiration (grant when players play well into their PC’s character traits) is a horrible design that both fails to achieve what it sets out to do and is both highly subjective & continuously forgotten.
The nat 1 approach doesn’t break any other system, reliably hands out a small trickle of Inspiration just the way the original was supposed to do and requires little to no work.
I’m somewhat tempted to introduce QoL features like “you can hold two” or “you can use them to reroll”, but part of me likes how it’s a limited tactical resource rather than a safety net.
My concern with that UA was that powergamers would try to keep doing mundane actions to generate more inspiration, though to be fair I don’t think anyone I play with would try that!
As a DM, I decide when an action warrants a roll.
Actions that don’t actually carry a risk when failing don’t fall into this category.
So no, trying to pick your training padlock won’t net you a roll. Trying to pickpocket in the marketplace will, but there’s some definitive consequences attached to failure.
Fortunately, I’ve got a table of rather mature players, so this isn’t a problem to begin with.