D&D and the Implied Setting

[pawsplay]

Just by the RAW, if you keep most towns under 5000 people, there is not a lot of magic floating around. In my current campaign, my players keep stumbling up against the "GP limit" and the levels of NPC spellcasters when they go shopping. I don't go for "no scrying," but at the same time, I don't want to rip out huge amounts of the rules.

So most experienced NPCs are under level 10, most towns are 5000 people or less, the kingdom's capital is 50,000, planar portals are rare, most communities are mono-racial, etc.

The PCs, by contrast, are armed to the teeth, can stare down most "ordinary" threats, whether the master knight or a gang of ogres, and can acquire more phat loot only by slaying dragons, looting cursed tombs, traveling the planes, visiting the town around the tower of magic, etc.

 

[Remathilis]

Ah, the implied setting. I did a post on this not too long ago, stating the 10 things about the D&D world as we know it. IIRC they were

01.) Alignment is concrete and knowable
02.) Monsters and myths are real and live near you
03.) Adventure is the quickest route to personal advancment
04.) Adventurers are a recognized element of society
05.) Gods are real and can talk to you.
06.) Mages and priests can make a living selling magic
07.) The dead don't always stay dead.
08.) There are 100s of sentient races, some geniuses compared to mortal man
09.) The afterlife is real and you can visit it BEFORE death
10.) Ancient treasure lies in inhospitable places waiting people to come and claim it.

Now, D&D assumes most of these in one form or another. Changing them radically changes assumtptions in the core rules. Not that it is a bad thing, but it creates an image of a society far different than the one we live in...

 

[Lucias]

I agree with most of your list, but I don't think 5 and 8 are so ingrained that they're unchangeable.

As for 5, Eberron breaks rule 5 and actually introduces faith into D&D, which wasn't there before. Still, the spells have to come from somewhere...

With regards to 8, that doesn't have to be true at all. If you just pared it down to 'lots' of sentient races I think it would hold closer to the implied setting.

 

[Andor]

One of my problems with the implied world is that a lot of the PRC flavor text seems to imply that there must be THOUSANDS upon thousands of mid to high level PC and PrC classed charaters running around. When you have an obscure and hidden type of magic user, which has an associated martial PrC that guards them, fine, I can see that. When the flavor text starts talking about these guys walking around in clumps of 20 to 70 and having rival factions my suspension of disbelief goes out the window like a bullet.

I'm cool with obscure or specialized PrCs, I am not cool with entire civilizations dedicated to supporting them. To my mind many PrCs do not need to have monestaries/orders/towers/societies/sewing circles. The PrC often makes more sense as a strange route to power that a handful of people have stumbled upon, or were taught by contact with an ancient spirit or handy pamphlet. Maybe a few of them even know each other and have swapped notes.

The Knights of the Chalice should have a formal organization and a headquarters. Same deal with Tattoed monks. Drunken Masters and Knights of the Sacred Seal do not IMHO.

 

[Lucias]

I think the affiliation rules in PHB II are more what I wanted PrCs to be when they were first announced in the early 3E hints.

If/When I run again, I'll be eliminating somwhere around 90% of the PrCs. Those that do make it will probably be tied to some level of an affiliation.

 

[Herobizkit]

You can't represent a Christian system, for instance, in D&D because in D&D, evil is an active principle not simply the absence of good.

I dunno, fusangite. I would call your "standard" D&D the epitome of the traditional Xian faith system. Evil is real, just as real in people as the demons that tempt them. Paladins are youor Holy Crusaders against all that is evil. You can simply drop all the "Pagan" D&D Gods and have one main all-Good and all-Evil deity, then have Clerics of aspects of said deity, or have them worshipping Angels of said aspects.

BTB I realize you're only illustrating an example, but I just wanted to point out that the inability to adapt a setting to the rules isn't necessarily the rules' fault.

You can't represent settings where people suffer and are motivated by permanent maiming or deformity as a result of specific battles, if you use the D&D damage mechanic. [...] This was brought into sharp relief in a game in which I played where our characters witnessed the hamstringing of an enemy war captive, a fate that the PCs could neither inflict nor suffer because of the game's damage mechanic.

Sure they could. Otherwise, how did the NPC get hamstrung? Rogue rolls to attack, gets his "sneak attack" off, declares a trip, and *paf* it's now a "hamstring" attack. I do get the fact that a realistic hamstring would cause permanent maiming, whereas the generic damage mechanic does not allow for such. So, it is up to your DM to find an in-game way to represent the damage. I would give the character a Flaw (from the Unearthed Arcana, I believe) and then work from there. All in all, though, It's all about creative interpreation and creative storytelling, AND about how liberal the players and DM agree upon to be.

 

[Herobizkit]

Agreed. I love D&D's implied world. The picture of the barkeep with a "No Spellcasting" sign behind him was one of the art pieces I instantly liked when I first read third ed's DMG.

Seriously. In a world that assumes the potential of people who can conjure balls of fire, it only maskes sense that "commoners" wouldn't want things happening in their places of business that they couldn't control. It's no stranger than posting a sign that says "No Guns Allowed" outside of a bar in today's world. (Granted, there are laws for gun control in my neck of the woods, but there are other areas in the world where gun laws are less strict... same deal with wizards).

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

Though the 3.x DnD doesn't adapt well to every medieval fantasy setting - its underappreciated. The people I was playing with during the second edition days looked everyone for an alternative to the awfulness that was the 2nd edition rule set.

1. A lot of people, especially a lot of people in this community, play with lower magic items than the DMG values, without a problem. There was an extremely long thread of people defending their choice to use lower magic within the last couple of months. This goes to show that the implied setting of magic all over the place can be done away with easily and successfully. Especially when a campaign starts at 1st level, the DM can evaluate CR by previous experience in the campaign to best challenge the PC's.

2. "If/When I run again, I'll be eliminating somwhere around 90% of the PrCs. Those that do make it will probably be tied to some level of an affiliation." No offense, Lucias, but this is not good DM'ing. Any DM'ing advice anywhere will tell you its better to let the PC's imaginations run wild and adapt your campaign world to fit, whenever possible. It also demonstrates a view of DM'ing DnD that looks for frustration in situations where there need not be any. I agree with Andor that most PrC's can be explained or re-explained as individual style adaption or personal growth adapted by individuals rather than organizationally taught.

 

[Imp]

This was brought into sharp relief in a game in which I played where our characters witnessed the hamstringing of an enemy war captive, a fate that the PCs could neither inflict nor suffer because of the game's damage mechanic.

Eh - you deal with this the same way you deal with it in one of those "rules light" systems, by adjudicating a set of conditions on the fly. It's not a computer game.

Hamstrung - a hamstrung character is restricted to a 10' movement rate and cannot run. In addition, he suffers a -2 penalty to dexterity. This applies until the condition is cured by (cure wounds spell/ healing potion/ whatever you decide.) A character can choose to hamstring another in lieu of a coup de grace.

There's something, more or less.

 

[Lucias]

2. "If/When I run again, I'll be eliminating somwhere around 90% of the PrCs. Those that do make it will probably be tied to some level of an affiliation." No offense, Lucias, but this is not good DM'ing. Any DM'ing advice anywhere will tell you its better to let the PC's imaginations run wild and adapt your campaign world to fit, whenever possible. It also demonstrates a view of DM'ing DnD that looks for frustration in situations where there need not be any. I agree with Andor that most PrC's can be explained or re-explained as individual style adaption or personal growth adapted by individuals rather than organizationally taught.

While I appreciate the advice, you're way overstepping your bounds in assumptions about my DMing.

You know absolutely nothing about me, my group, or our style. Because of this you don't know that I'm a free-wheeling GM who loves to see the players do really cool stuff and have fun doing it. You don't know of the successful campaigns I've headed for the last decade that, through both my efforts and those of fantastic players, we still rave about today.

And, most importantly, you don't know that my decision to pare down PrCs stems directly from talking to my players about what we want if we play 3.5 again. We want something that feels more like OD&D and as such they've asked to keep multiclassing to an absolute minimum and to make PrCs limited and special.

So the next time you want to criticize someone's DMing, how about you inquire about the decision before jump to your own wrong conclusions.

This kind of thing is why I don't post much.