D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[tetrasodium]

I had to read this twice. You keep talking about "pushing back" and "folding"- that was a simple compromise to fit the background into an existing campaign with minimum fuss.

Where are you finding these players who are so unreasonable that they insist to use backgrounds exactly as printed and refuse to allow the DM to adjust them to make them work? And why would any DM put up with them as players?

Your hypothesis that somehow WotC reinforces bad players without giving the poor DM any recourse is ridiculous in the extreme. No DM is forced to run a game at gunpoint.

The books tell players they can reasonably expect their background features to come up. The DMG tells the DM to work with the players to see if it's possible to make that happen, and even tells DMs that they can create custom backgrounds for their game if existing ones aren't up to snuff.

Games do not require giant block letters saying "THE GM IS KING" in order to be played. Any group that cannot compromise shouldn't be playing any game together, D&D or otherwise.

Reading was autocorrected to teasing in the original post, I went back to fix that.

This very thread has examples of those players you are questioning. The trouble with your "compromise" is that this thread was just talking about revising ravenloft so a criminal taken from another setting by The Dark Powers could expect to use their background feature in ravenloft as if anything less was unreasonable, that is a very significant change to ravenloft with repercussions throughout the entirety of the setting. Your "compromise" is a total non-change, expecting A FR GM to add the dragonmark houses fallen dhakanni empire & shift to eberron style goblinoids is much more comperable to what the thread was literally suggesting a reasonable expectation for a hypothetical ravenloft GM to engage in when I brought in the eberron backgrounds.

 

[Faolyn]

Can they? I suppose. Is it going to make any sense, be helpful at all? No.. Is it going to start being a bit stupid when everyone in the party just happens to get so lucky? Yes, I think so. Let's say your characters have backgrounds criminal, noble, folk hero, gladiator, sage, sailor. Each one has a background feature that requires that they be recognized and given special treatment.

Except they're in Barovia, a strange land cut off from the normal world for centuries with no contact. A big part of the module is that the entire place is a mystery and they're fish out of water. How often can they "just happen to stumble across" people that know who they are? That sage is supposed to know who to contact to find info or where to go, but you know no one here and no one back home has ever heard of this place. The poor sailor of course is just completely SOL unless you redraw the map and add an ocean.

Or you could extrapolate a bit. Sages, folk heroes, and nobles are going to have an air about them that others would recognize. Even if the noble doesn't know the Barovian aristocracy, they would recognize their courtly manners and noble bearing. The sage would impress the local librarians with their erudition. The common folk would recognize a low-key hero of the people.

Criminals can fit in anywhere, and while Curse of Strahd may not list any thieves' guilds, there's no reason to believe that there are no criminals in the domain and letting the PC meet one to act as their contact. Likewise, while gladiatorial arena is out of character for Barovia, an underground fighting pit is not.

And Barovia has Lake Zarovich. It even has its own lake monster, or at least it did in earlier editions (can't remember for 5e). And unlike "real" worlds, Ravenloft is wibbly enough that you can easily make the Lake as large as you need for the sailor to use.

Literally the only thing stopping a DM from using those backgrounds features is the DM not wanting to invent a few details.

Or, you could do what I have literally always done and just have the players be natives.

 

[mamba]

Or you could extrapolate a bit. Sages, folk heroes, and nobles are going to have an air about them that others would recognize. Even if the noble doesn't know the Barovian aristocracy, they would recognize their courtly manners and noble bearing. The sage would impress the local librarians with their erudition. The common folk would recognize a low-key hero of the people.

I can maybe buy the noble (it’s not like their behavior was even remotely the same across space and time, so it is not that universally recognizable either), but there are no librarians, so that is a problem for the Sage, and I absolutely do not buy the Folk Hero.

Criminals can fit in anywhere, and while Curse of Strahd may not list any thieves' guilds

finding a thieves guild, sure, getting word to your network (and them being able to help in any form) on the other hand… not so much

 

[Faolyn]

I can maybe buy the noble (it’s not like their behavior was even remotely the same across space and time, so it is not that universally recognizable either), but there are no librarians, so that is a problem for the Sage, and I absolutely do not buy the Folk Hero.


finding a thieves guild, sure, getting word to your network (and them being able to help in any form) on the other hand… not so much

Consider the following:

D&D generally doesn't make that much of an effort to make people act differently in their different settings, because that's a level of worldbuilding that they tend to not go into very deeply. At least when the cultures are the standard pseudo-European in nature. Mostly that's up to the DM. And good, courtly manners are good, courtly manners--and noble PCs should have been raised to know how to use good, courtly manners, simply by dint of being raised a noble. Whether the player chooses to use them is a different story.

The Haunted One from CoS/VRGR background basically says that people can just tell you've been through trauma and commoners will help you out of courtesy. Unrealistic, probably, since superstitious Barovian commoners would probably shun someone like this, lest the horrors follow them. But what it means is that there is a precedent for NPCs just being able to "tell" that a particular character is a sage or folk hero.

Apparently, everyone in Barovia speaks Common, since they don't do domain languages anymore (unless they do and I've forgotten it). Assuming that the criminal is also a rogue, or the DM lets a non-rogue criminal take Thieves' Cant as one of their languages (I'd allow it, if the the player's background warranted it), then that should also be a universal language--which means that a potential criminal contact (even if not part of an actual thieves' guild) would recognize the PC as One Of Them.

And finally, well, it's part of the character. As long as player made at least some RP effort to make a connection--no rolls needed, just roleplay--then I, personally, would have no problem using their background features.

 

[James Gasik]

In Ravenloft, if a player wanted to use their background feature, I'm sure the Dark Powers themselves would love to make it happen for them (with all appropriate strings attached, of course), to ensnare them. What lengths would a noble go to secure their kingdom and legacy? What would a criminal do to form their own guild of thieves?

And their reward can be their very own little cursed realm about 1 acre square, with that new Domain smell!

 

[mamba]

D&D generally doesn't make that much of an effort to make people act differently in their different settings, because that's a level of worldbuilding that they tend to not go into very deeply.

I agree, which is why I was ok with the Noble in Barovia, I might not be ok with them somewhere else, but by and large they have a good chance, if only because the people around them defer to them, so any observer can see they are important (might not work with a group of adventurers though, much better for a noble and their entourage)

The Haunted One from CoS/VRGR background basically says that people can just tell you've been through trauma and commoners will help you out of courtesy. Unrealistic, probably, since superstitious Barovian commoners would probably shun someone like this, lest the horrors follow them. But what it means is that there is a precedent for NPCs just being able to "tell" that a particular character is a sage or folk hero.

um, no, there is precedent to see that someone has been through a lot. The issue for the Sage also was not recognition but a simple lack of libraries.

The Folk Hero stands no chance, no one will recognize them, and if I use Robin Hood as an example then he does not get recognized by everyone but can blend into crowds just fine… the Folk Hero gets recognized by the folk they helped / in the area they are active in, not a continent over and certainly not on another plane.

The thief can find a guild, no problem there, but that does not mean they have access to the contact and network the feature describes, so they will have to make do with what the local guild can provide (and until they have proven themselves that will be less than the established network…)

I guess what this shows more than anything else is why these features were a bad idea, at least as written

 

[mamba]

In Ravenloft, if a player wanted to use their background feature, I'm sure the Dark Powers themselves would love to make it happen for them (with all appropriate strings attached, of course)

sounds like the background feature is not needed for this at all..

 

[Oofta]

Or you could extrapolate a bit. Sages, folk heroes, and nobles are going to have an air about them that others would recognize. Even if the noble doesn't know the Barovian aristocracy, they would recognize their courtly manners and noble bearing. The sage would impress the local librarians with their erudition. The common folk would recognize a low-key hero of the people.

Criminals can fit in anywhere, and while Curse of Strahd may not list any thieves' guilds, there's no reason to believe that there are no criminals in the domain and letting the PC meet one to act as their contact. Likewise, while gladiatorial arena is out of character for Barovia, an underground fighting pit is not.

And Barovia has Lake Zarovich. It even has its own lake monster, or at least it did in earlier editions (can't remember for 5e). And unlike "real" worlds, Ravenloft is wibbly enough that you can easily make the Lake as large as you need for the sailor to use.

Literally the only thing stopping a DM from using those backgrounds features is the DM not wanting to invent a few details.

Or, you could do what I have literally always done and just have the players be natives.

Sage knows people or resources. The others have advantages because people know who they are. As far as I know, there is only one town near the lake, much less any ports and it requires someone who knows no one to just run into an old sailing buddy. I'm not even going to say what I think about some people being somehow special solely because of who their parents were.

The only thing stopping the DM from making this work is that they don't treat background features as magic and they want their world to have logical consistency. That doesn't mean there can't be other benefits, it's just not going to be the background feature as written if it's illogical.

 

[Scott Christian]

Bob takes that claim at face value and now requires that you add the fallen dhakani empire to your Forgotten Realms campaign and adjust goblins to match Eberron style goblins. I could go on to copy/paste backgrounds for specific dragonmarked houses, Alice expects you to add some Eberron's megacorp-like dragonmarked houses to your FR game world too.

All of those are easily added. The DM doesn't have to do anything. The Forgotten Realms is one of many realms and planes of existence in the D&D-verse. Someone from a Dragonmarked house, great. They're from a Dragonmarked house. In many D&D campaigns, and in several published adventures, they are little more than a traveler. And why would the DM need to adjust the goblins? The goblins of FR are already set. Just because the player happens to be from Eberron doesn't mean the entire lore set transfers over. I said backgrounds, just like skills, are transferrable. I didn't say races.
And please understand, anyone that has read anything I wrote on this forum knows I believe the DM should (and must) have the right to say no - especially to races. But, this is the D&D cantina, and even published adventures have a ton of different races from other settings. We're playing Candlekeep right now and we have encountered several races that are from other planes or realms. It is what it is.

that is why I asked this as a question, you can always find some way to make things work. I'd rather not jump through too unlikely hoops for it, so I would not use your proposal and the Criminal has no way of contacting anyone at home. From a practical perspective I am not sure doing so would help them in Barovia anyway, even if they could, unless you come up with more convoluted and improbably explanations for how them being in Barovia has no actual impact on the feature.

Yes, you can always find an answer. The difficulty is to make that answer feel natural. Sometimes during a campaign that lasts a year, it's pretty easy to do. Sometimes, it's harder than others. Either way, it requires some thought, maybe a bit of tinkering, and some planning on the DMs part. If a DM doesn't want to jump through those hoops, that's fine. Tell the player that up front.
Just please don't say it can't be done. It can. And for many players, it can even feel as though it was just a natural part of the story.

 

[tetrasodium]

All of those are easily added. The DM doesn't have to do anything. The Forgotten Realms is one of many realms and planes of existence in the D&D-verse. Someone from a Dragonmarked house, great. They're from a Dragonmarked house. In many D&D campaigns, and in several published adventures, they are little more than a traveler. And why would the DM need to adjust the goblins? The goblins of FR are already set. Just because the player happens to be from Eberron doesn't mean the entire lore set transfers over. I said backgrounds, just like skills, are transferrable. I didn't say races.
And please understand, anyone that has read anything I wrote on this forum knows I believe the DM should (and must) have the right to say no - especially to races. But, this is the D&D cantina, and even published adventures have a ton of different races from other settings. We're playing Candlekeep right now and we have encountered several races that are from other planes or realms. It is what it is.

Yes, you can always find an answer. The difficulty is to make that answer feel natural. Sometimes during a campaign that lasts a year, it's pretty easy to do. Sometimes, it's harder than others. Either way, it requires some thought, maybe a bit of tinkering, and some planning on the DMs part. If a DM doesn't want to jump through those hoops, that's fine. Tell the player that up front.
Just please don't say it can't be done. It can. And for many players, it can even feel as though it was just a natural part of the story.

No, this twisting and turning to avoid doing to a FR campaign what you said should be so easy for a GM running a ravenloft campaign is telling. The background feature talks about the presence of those houses in the world. Bob is in waterdeep and wants to visit the Cannith enclave for some real options While Eddy is wanting to visit the Sivis enclave to browse their selection of reproduced spellbooks. In a few months Alice wants to Hire a Zilargo crafted airship through the Lyrandar enclave.