Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
D&D and the Implied Setting
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3040628" data-attributes="member: 7240"><p>I do similar things with alignment myself. But the point here is that there is an implied setting and that, as we move away from the default setting, we have to amend the rules more and more substantially. At some point, a system will cease to meaningfully be D&D. </p><p></p><p>Second edition Runequest was a system published in 1981 with STR, CON, DEX, INT, POW (power as a substitute for wisdom) and CHA; each character had hit points. Other superficial similarities existed. But there was no question that the game that was being played was no longer D&D; so little question that, as far as I know, no litigation was ever taken up against Chaosium.</p><p></p><p>Now, I could take any mechanic in D20, alignment, combat actions, hit points/damage, spells and replace it and you could say "Well, that's still D&D." At what point have you replaced enough pieces of the rules that it's not D&D but some other game? For every example I could provide of ways that D&D entails a certain setting, you could respond just as you have on the alignment question.What we are arguing about is the implied setting of D&D. Some people have argued that there is no limit to the fantasy settings D&D can depict. It seems to me that, in order to argue for or against this proposition, there has to be an operative definition of D&D. The D20 license is the closest thing I can think of to an operative definition. If you want to argue that D&D=anything people declare to be D&D, I'll happily agree that, if you use that definition, D&D can model anything because D&D can be anything. But that doesn't really get us anywhere, nor does it allow us to ask and answer basic questions about the implied setting of the game.If you allow locational damage in this instance, explain to me why you wouldn't need to allow it in some other instance. If you can hamstring someone, what about cutting off an arm? A leg? Why couldn't you aim for an eye in combat? </p><p></p><p>I suppose a group could produce a big almanac of piecemeal rules for locational damage for each situation that arose or, it could completely rewrite the D&D damage mechanic. In the first instance, you end up with a ratty set of exceptions tacked-on to a system that is antithetical to them; in the second, you end up with a damage mechanic other than D&D.That's great. Now make an optional rule for every locational injury. Now come up with the conditions under which they could be inflicted. And presto! A new, non-D&D damage mechanic!It seems to me that the basic spirit of the D20 damage mechanic is that a person can be in three states with respect to combat: 1. able to fight 2. unconscious 3. dead. Now, D&D permits various states of disability but I would note that not a single one involves locational damage, not even deafness or blindness. It seems to me that you have effectively replaced the system if you graft physically located injuries onto this.Because it's bad GMing and bad world building. A competent GM should be able to make a self-consistent world. For goodness' sake, he can unilaterally write house rules; if he can't manage to represent something using rules of his own design, he doesn't have any business representing it.Look at the posts to which I was responding.Fair enough. I just don't see what anybody loses by making a setting that conforms to a set of self-consistent rules. I guess I just don't understand what the downside is.This just seems an intellecutally uninteresting way to go. Why not develop a model that explains what is going on? What is the downside of self-consistency if you can pull it off?While my games are not everybody's cup of tea, I don't know why you would advise me to stop doing the thing that people find attractive about my games. The people who like my games like them because they know there is an underlying coherence to my worlds and figuring out the underlying system that governs them is a big part of the payoff. My players, between them, generate about 10 pages of notes per session; they correspond with eachother between games. They do this because they have faith that when they crack the big code, the phenomena with which their characters have interacted will take on a unity and a meaning.When I join a game, I join a game to experience a coherent story and setting fashioned by my GM. I do not show up to design a setting by committee. If you want to game in RPGs where the GM is just one voice among many designing the physical laws and cultures of his world, go buy Sorceror or Burning Wheel. </p><p></p><p>If I want to design a setting, I'll be the GM. If I'm showing up with a character sheet, that means I'm here to play a setting, a setting based on an internal logic more powerful and coherent than what PrC some munchkin has just found in the latest piece of overpriced WOTC swag.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="fusangite, post: 3040628, member: 7240"] I do similar things with alignment myself. But the point here is that there is an implied setting and that, as we move away from the default setting, we have to amend the rules more and more substantially. At some point, a system will cease to meaningfully be D&D. Second edition Runequest was a system published in 1981 with STR, CON, DEX, INT, POW (power as a substitute for wisdom) and CHA; each character had hit points. Other superficial similarities existed. But there was no question that the game that was being played was no longer D&D; so little question that, as far as I know, no litigation was ever taken up against Chaosium. Now, I could take any mechanic in D20, alignment, combat actions, hit points/damage, spells and replace it and you could say "Well, that's still D&D." At what point have you replaced enough pieces of the rules that it's not D&D but some other game? For every example I could provide of ways that D&D entails a certain setting, you could respond just as you have on the alignment question.What we are arguing about is the implied setting of D&D. Some people have argued that there is no limit to the fantasy settings D&D can depict. It seems to me that, in order to argue for or against this proposition, there has to be an operative definition of D&D. The D20 license is the closest thing I can think of to an operative definition. If you want to argue that D&D=anything people declare to be D&D, I'll happily agree that, if you use that definition, D&D can model anything because D&D can be anything. But that doesn't really get us anywhere, nor does it allow us to ask and answer basic questions about the implied setting of the game.If you allow locational damage in this instance, explain to me why you wouldn't need to allow it in some other instance. If you can hamstring someone, what about cutting off an arm? A leg? Why couldn't you aim for an eye in combat? I suppose a group could produce a big almanac of piecemeal rules for locational damage for each situation that arose or, it could completely rewrite the D&D damage mechanic. In the first instance, you end up with a ratty set of exceptions tacked-on to a system that is antithetical to them; in the second, you end up with a damage mechanic other than D&D.That's great. Now make an optional rule for every locational injury. Now come up with the conditions under which they could be inflicted. And presto! A new, non-D&D damage mechanic!It seems to me that the basic spirit of the D20 damage mechanic is that a person can be in three states with respect to combat: 1. able to fight 2. unconscious 3. dead. Now, D&D permits various states of disability but I would note that not a single one involves locational damage, not even deafness or blindness. It seems to me that you have effectively replaced the system if you graft physically located injuries onto this.Because it's bad GMing and bad world building. A competent GM should be able to make a self-consistent world. For goodness' sake, he can unilaterally write house rules; if he can't manage to represent something using rules of his own design, he doesn't have any business representing it.Look at the posts to which I was responding.Fair enough. I just don't see what anybody loses by making a setting that conforms to a set of self-consistent rules. I guess I just don't understand what the downside is.This just seems an intellecutally uninteresting way to go. Why not develop a model that explains what is going on? What is the downside of self-consistency if you can pull it off?While my games are not everybody's cup of tea, I don't know why you would advise me to stop doing the thing that people find attractive about my games. The people who like my games like them because they know there is an underlying coherence to my worlds and figuring out the underlying system that governs them is a big part of the payoff. My players, between them, generate about 10 pages of notes per session; they correspond with eachother between games. They do this because they have faith that when they crack the big code, the phenomena with which their characters have interacted will take on a unity and a meaning.When I join a game, I join a game to experience a coherent story and setting fashioned by my GM. I do not show up to design a setting by committee. If you want to game in RPGs where the GM is just one voice among many designing the physical laws and cultures of his world, go buy Sorceror or Burning Wheel. If I want to design a setting, I'll be the GM. If I'm showing up with a character sheet, that means I'm here to play a setting, a setting based on an internal logic more powerful and coherent than what PrC some munchkin has just found in the latest piece of overpriced WOTC swag. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
D&D and the Implied Setting
Top