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

[Oofta]

Good question! If it's so infrequent, why do you insist it can't work? Why not just shrug and figure out a way to make it work the once or twice it will come up in your game?

How many times do we have to repeat? It has to make sense in context of the current situation. My campaigns take people far and wide, to other planes of existence, sometimes alternate timelines. So instead of worrying about things like that or setting up false expectations that something will work when it makes no sense to me I replace it with something that does work on a regular basis and is far more useful.

We aren't watching a 2 hour movie, we're playing a long run campaign. I could have each of my 6 players having that one in a million chance a a few of times over the course of the campaign. The first time is luck, the second time is incredibly lucky the third, fourth and fifth time it happens to the group it's dumb as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Hriston]

Narrative control means that the player controls the narrative; the player makes design decisions about the world outside of their character. In the case of the sailor, there is no way I can list everywhere they have not been or do not have contacts, that's a nearly infinite list which would include things I hadn't even thought of ahead of time. As a DM if I know they are sailors from the Seer Sea, I have a general idea of what trade routes they were on and where they may have contacts.

My players and I discuss their background, and they are free to add to that background. I just want editorial control which means big changes are done offline, not during gameplay. As always everyone is free to ask about details of their current situation, things they may or may not know. In my example of someone from the Seer Sea, there is a very slight possibility they'd know someone halfway across the world in which case I'll have them roll a percentile die. When in doubt, roll for it. But the player can't just declare that while they're in Jotunheim that they happen to know someone who sails the Sea of Fire. Before you protest that no one would do that, I've absolutely encountered people over the years who would.

Thanks for clarifying what you meant by narrative control. As you can see from my clarification of what I was calling dysfunctional, it had pretty much nothing to do with that or with anything else in the rest of your post.

 

[Faolyn]

How many times do we have to repeat? It has to make sense in context of the current situation. My campaigns take people far and wide, to other planes of existence, sometimes alternate timelines. So instead of worrying about things like that or setting up false expectations that something will work when it makes no sense to me I replace it with something that does work on a regular basis and is far more useful.

We aren't watching a 2 hour movie, we're playing a long run campaign. I could have each of my 6 players having that one in a million chance a a few of times over the course of the campaign. The first time is luck, the second time is incredibly lucky the third, fourth and fifth time it happens to the group it's dumb as far as I'm concerned.

If it's something that's going to happen only incredibly rarely, then to quote you, why do you care?

For that matter, have you had players try to use these "one in a million chance" abilities four or five times in what is a presumably multi-year campaign? Or are you just making assumptions and nixing abilities based on nothing more than whiteroom theorycrafting? See, if people were pulling a "one in a million chance" four or five times in a 2-hour movie, that probably would be very ridiculous (depends on the movie, though). But four or five times over dozens of sessions? Nah. It's fine. Especially since it's not likely to even be four or five times.

it does not matter whether that is the only time the player wants to use the feature in the whole campaign, that does not suddenly make it more likely that they just so happen to stumble across someone they know just when they 'needed' it

Well, as Oofta says, why do you care? If it happens once in a blue moon, it's not at all hard to make it logical or just hand-wave the illogic away. Running into someone you happen to know is certainly no less illogical than anything else in D&D and it certainly becomes a lot more logical if you realize that NPCs can (and probably should) move around just as much as PCs can. Travel for pleasure or business, being deported or transported, on the run from the law, being enslaved, magical mishaps... there's a zillion reasons why the PCs may run into someone they know that make complete sense.

You wanna know what's illogical? That fighters, no matter their origin, social class, and training, are equally proficient in all weapons and armor. That Eberron was the first official setting to take "magic is nearly 100% reliable" into consideration, even though magic has been nearly 100% reliable since the game was first created. That by RAW, PCs all knows how to read and write. That dragons haven't completely destroyed the ecosystem. That there are entire ecosystems underground that can support large, active life. That the vast majority of both official and homebrew systems assume "Medieval European" settings despite the vast array of intelligent beings with completely different histories and religions.

You know what the actual difference between these things and a background feature is? The difference is has nothing to do with logic. It's that easier to say that a player can't have an ability than it is to completely redo the proficiency system or to do deep-delve world building.

 

[Hriston]

?

Of course you can use them. You have skills and a feat, a language and a tool. And you can behave like a commoner or noble etc.

If you chose to be a variant human, you have about the same packet of codified abilites.

You don't need a background to have skills, feats, languages, or tools, and I can have my character behave any way I want. I don't need a background for that. I like the 2014 backgrounds because they give the player something you can't get anywhere else in the game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You don't need a background to have skills, feats, languages, or tools, and I can have my character behave any way I want. I don't need a background for that. I like the 2014 backgrounds because they give the player something you can't get anywhere else in the game.

Ok. If you think it works for you, play with 2014 backgrounds. Those features did not prove to have much value in our games. Sad but true.

The only thing the sailor background added was saving our party a few pieces of gold per person. The sage background just skipped a bit of downtime activity researching where to find some piece of knowledge. So usually it skipped some of what people find fun in the game. Or saved a few adventuring days. But in nonway it did things something noone else could get.

 

[Oofta]

Thanks for clarifying what you meant by narrative control. As you can see from my clarification of what I was calling dysfunctional, it had pretty much nothing to do with that or with anything else in the rest of your post.

So you agree that the background feature for a sailor will not always work? Thing is though, as a DM I'm not going to state that the sailor knows no one in every port they find themselves in. I can't tell enumerate every negative, every detail of everywhere the PCs find themselves.

But, if you follow the strict reading of the sailor background feature they will know someone in port because there are no exceptions. "When you need to, you can secure free passage on a sailing ship for yourself and your adventuring companions. You might sail on the ship you served on, or another ship you have good relations with (perhaps one captained by a former crewmate). Because you’re calling in a favor, you can’t be certain of a schedule or route that will meet your every need."

 

[Oofta]

If it's something that's going to happen only incredibly rarely, then to quote you, why do you care?

For that matter, have you had players try to use these "one in a million chance" abilities four or five times in what is a presumably multi-year campaign? Or are you just making assumptions and nixing abilities based on nothing more than whiteroom theorycrafting? See, if people were pulling a "one in a million chance" four or five times in a 2-hour movie, that probably would be very ridiculous (depends on the movie, though). But four or five times over dozens of sessions? Nah. It's fine. Especially since it's not likely to even be four or five times.


Well, as Oofta says, why do you care? If it happens once in a blue moon, it's not at all hard to make it logical or just hand-wave the illogic away. Running into someone you happen to know is certainly no less illogical than anything else in D&D and it certainly becomes a lot more logical if you realize that NPCs can (and probably should) move around just as much as PCs can. Travel for pleasure or business, being deported or transported, on the run from the law, being enslaved, magical mishaps... there's a zillion reasons why the PCs may run into someone they know that make complete sense.

You wanna know what's illogical? That fighters, no matter their origin, social class, and training, are equally proficient in all weapons and armor. That Eberron was the first official setting to take "magic is nearly 100% reliable" into consideration, even though magic has been nearly 100% reliable since the game was first created. That by RAW, PCs all knows how to read and write. That dragons haven't completely destroyed the ecosystem. That there are entire ecosystems underground that can support large, active life. That the vast majority of both official and homebrew systems assume "Medieval European" settings despite the vast array of intelligent beings with completely different histories and religions.

You know what the actual difference between these things and a background feature is? The difference is has nothing to do with logic. It's that easier to say that a player can't have an ability than it is to completely redo the proficiency system or to do deep-delve world building.

I'm done repeating myself. If it is illogical for a feature to work, it won't work.

 

[Arilyn]

Since @Oofta is replacing the features with ones which work better for his game, why the pushback? Players are getting features...

 

[Hriston]

that is too bad, because I explained it in the text you quoted

Going back and reading your post, it seems you mean something like making the ship stop where the character thinks it does, and I'm still not following because it's trivially true that the character thinking something does not make that thing true in the fiction. What makes it true in the fiction is everyone at the table agreeing it's true in the fiction.

no, it is a fact, just because your character thinks something does not make it true, as I said they are either correct or mistaken

But who decides? If it's the player's choice to play their character as someone who's sane or someone who's delusional, then they are the one roleplaying their character. If it's the DM, then the DM is doing the roleplaying.

a plane you never have been to, upon arrival? pretty much, you can find out about them, but you cannot just spout them out with no prior knowledge, that should be self-explanatory

Because it's impossible to find out things about other planes before you go there? Even if you're a sailor who's spent years acquiring knowledge about various ship routes?

 

[Oofta]

Since @Oofta is replacing the features with ones which work better for his game, why the pushback? Players are getting features...

I assume it has more to do with DM and player roles than anything. I've never seen background features as written matter much, which is why I make it part of the bigger backstory which has always had minor benefits here and there. But there are some people that insist that if we are not following the letter of the rules then the DM must be doing it because they want to control the game and, as one poster recently put it, a DM that does that is railroading the game to control the flow and direction of the game.

I obviously completely disagree with that, my campaigns are quite open and only as linear as the players want, some groups want a lot of say in direction others just go with the flow. What it does mean though is that a feature may not work because in my best judgement it doesn't make sense in the current context. But the DM using their best judgement and making the call? According to some posters it's a DM making arbitrary calls at random. Again, I disagree. The core tenet of D&D is that the DM controls the world, the players control the PCs. To put it a different way, everything the player declares their PC is going to do is fundamentally a request that the DM approves. On the other hand the DM never tells the player what their PC thinks for feels, barring magical control of the character. You can of course modify that, I just don't see a need to.

Or I'm wrong and we're arguing about this because to some people put the rules text above all else, the rules matter more than the story we're telling around the table. Or ... heck if I know.