D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Hussar]

LOL I just reread the last dozen posts 3 times and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about

Not sure how much clearer I can be to be honest. The mechanics of the game serve the game, not the world. The world is only there because it makes the game more interesting. Heck, you don't actually need a world at all to play D&D. I mean, Basic D&D talks about having a Town and a Dungeon. That's it. You don't need to detail the town at all. And the Dungeon certainly doesn't need to make sense.

We world build because it makes the game more interesting. But, world building in D&D is largely outside the actual mechanics of the game.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Your point seems to be that wherever we are not looking, the rules cease to apply. That's really not true for me. We might not be worrying about how the rules apply right there at this exact moment, but if we turned out attention to it then sure enough, the rules are there. The reason I find this a strange criticism is that it applies to Traveller just as much as D&D. Those worlds we haven't mapped yet? What's going on there? Well, a UPP will exist in potential for them just as much as one exists in actuality for worlds we've already surveyed.

The difference being, you actually USE Traveller mechanics to build those worlds. They have pretty extensive mechanics for building a world from the ground up (no pun intended). Various charts and whatnot and an entire process in order to create that planet.

What process does D&D include to build a world? Now, there's lots of advice, sure. But, if you'll notice, the advice actually doesn't reference the mechanics at all. That world that you build for D&D is largely whatever you think is best.

Put it another way. Can a king in your D&D world have a heart attack and die? Can he fall off a horse and die? Do you have anyone in your game world missing a limb? Or anyone with any sort of congenital condition? I'll assume you have at least one of those. Yet, none of those are actually possible under the D&D mechanics.

Can you look at mechanics for inspiration? Sure. OTOH, you can simply hand wave the entire thing and decide that your Kuo Toa migration paths take X time to traverse.

 

[clearstream]

Sticking with the weather, say the party has been adventuring on one side of the world, and in a lull, one of them teleports to the other side, and asks a local what the weather was like last Tuesday.

Now, at that point you're not just making up the weather records for that region, you're probably making up the local. You might give him a whole life with a bit of tragedy, or a nefarious purpose - or not even give him a name...

Yet if he is human, his base speed will usually be 30'.

Are there really that many of that important (to the play experience) world-building guidelines to collide with?

In these last few pages I keep observing what I will dub a "blindness" to the rules. Every monster in the MM is part of the implicit world-building rules. Are there dragons? Do they use stat-blocks from or based upon those in the MM, at or around the given CRs? Do their hit points work the same as other creature's hit points? Then their part of the world was built using the rules.

Actually, in 5e, the basic resolution mechanic stars with 'player declares action' - no player, no declaration, not the same mechanics, anymore.

This takes a concept that deals with one part of the game, and liberally misapplies it to other parts of the game. The Shield spell works as it does whether or not any player ever declares an action using it. A settlement can (and usually must) be generated using the tables prior to a player declaring any action in relation to that settlement.

The only internal consistency in a D&D campaign is that not noticed as inconsistent by the players.

This is neat and glib, but facile. As Tolkien said, if you don't work out your world in advance you end up in a terrible mess later on. The list of consistent world elements provided by the rules is extensive. It's disingenuous to pretend that everything is on the fly. From the basics - hit points, AC, saving throws and abilities, rounds, turns and actions - all the way up to the trimmings - Gruumsh's Fury - consistency (and validation FTM) is supplied by the rules. Let's consider the counter-case: your world strictly ignores the D&D rules? It is completely unhooked from them. Players walk into a settlement... they're unable to use their Persuasion etc skills on the locals because the mechanics don't connect. When a local frazzles them with a fizzer, they don't enter combat so can't take actions.

To some extent I believe the argument is misstating what world building means in D&D. It functions via a series of lenses, each providing more detail than the last. Consistency is maintained through the rules telling us what to expect when we hit the level of detail that players work at. That level of magnification only applies in a few places at a time.

Trying to get there, for the whole world, by depending on the consistency inherent in adhering to the same mechanics at all times (DMing as Science) works, in theory (apropos, that) but is prohibitive. Using the mechanics of the game only for the game, itself, and overruling them when they aren't consistent with your vision of the world (DMing as Art), is theoretically going to be inconsistent, some of the time, but it's practicable.

Sometimes overruling and always disregarding are different things. Almost always, a random human will turn out to have a speed of 30', and to manage 6 miles a day at an average pace in the Underdark. Rules like that create a consistent world.

 

[clearstream]

The difference being, you actually USE Traveller mechanics to build those worlds. They have pretty extensive mechanics for building a world from the ground up (no pun intended). Various charts and whatnot and an entire process in order to create that planet.

What process does D&D include to build a world? Now, there's lots of advice, sure. But, if you'll notice, the advice actually doesn't reference the mechanics at all.

Other than the mechanics it references, you mean? It's littered with references and includes tables. Possibly you overlook some of them, but think about the import of guidelines reading "if spellcasters of low-level spells are common". "Low" what? We know what a low-level spell is because it references rules. D&D might not provide everything we could want but it makes no sense at all to say it doesn't offer rules and guidelines (that themselves rely on and reference the broader rules base) for world building. It's as if whole chapters of the book can't be seen by some readers.

Put it another way. Can a king in your D&D world have a heart attack and die? Can he fall off a horse and die? Do you have anyone in your game world missing a limb? Or anyone with any sort of congenital condition? I'll assume you have at least one of those. Yet, none of those are actually possible under the D&D mechanics.

This is a kind of absolutist argument. You seem to be saying that unless D&D rules cover everything then they might as well cover nothing. From the rules, we know that if the King is a halfling he will be adult by age 20 and generally live into the middle of his second century. We don't know if he does, or does not have a mole on his fabled perfect bottom. That part we need to fill in ourselves. The fact that we need to fill in that part does nothing to disappear the rules that limit his base speed to 25' unmodified and mean that he really can't keep up with that annoying Wood Elf Monk adviser of his.

TCan you look at mechanics for inspiration? Sure. OTOH, you can simply hand wave the entire thing and decide that your Kuo Toa migration paths take X time to traverse

Or you look at the rules for consistency and go with the 4 miles per day slow rate for travel in the Underdark.

 

[Harzel]

Once you realize that adventure building mechanics are entirely divorced from world building concerns, all your inconsistencies vanish.

I guess my take would be more along the lines of

Once you make adventure building mechanics entirely divorced from world building concerns, all your consistency vanishes.​

Because, quite frankly, the mechanics first model leads to very inconsistent settings.

Can you point to or sketch an example (or something else) that demonstrates this?

 

[Lanefan]

Put it another way. Can a king in your D&D world have a heart attack and die?

Can't see why not. There's a range of ages that people will live to unless killed earlier by something; so you'll at some point (if it matters) roll to see at what age ol' Kingy's going to die. A roll at the young end of the range could be narrated as a heart attack. Failing that, a heart attack could easily be a DM's narration of a deadly poison effect...

Can he fall off a horse and die?

Mechanically, this would depend on one of a) whether you're using any sort of injury system beyond simple hit points, or b) whether the king has any more going for him stamina-wise than an average commoner, who certainly could risk death from a fall from a horse.

Do you have anyone in your game world missing a limb?

I would certainly hope so...or do Swords of Sharpness not exist any more?

Or anyone with any sort of congenital condition?

I'll concede this one. D&D as written has never done disease well, meaning that if a DM wants things like this she has to make them up on her own.

I'll assume you have at least one of those. Yet, none of those are actually possible under the D&D mechanics.

Well, I just more or less mechanized three out of four...

Lan-"mechanicman"-efan

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sorry, no, never said you can't or even shouldn't do worldbuilding in D&D. Of course you can.

Dude.

Arguing that the encounter system makes for wonky world building is pretty pointless. Of COURSE it makes for wonky world building. You're not supposed to use the system for that. It's not designed for that. Stop driving your sports car through mud tracks and complaining that it gets stuck.

Thing is, the worldbuilding you do is largely independent of the mechanics.

Which has been my point all the way along. Just because the PC's meet 3 Deadly/Day encounters does not in any way shape or form mean that monsters only travel in Deadly groups. It only means that your PC's meet Deadly groups because, you, the DM, have decided on that pacing. It has ZERO impact on the rest of the world.

It's only when you try to force adventure building mechanics (which is precisely what the pacing, or XP/Day guidelines are) onto a larger world implication that you have problems. Once you realize that adventure building mechanics are entirely divorced from world building concerns, all your inconsistencies vanish.

IOW, just because your PC's meet two vampires, does not mean that vampires are common in the setting. It could very well be that they met the only two vampires in the entire setting. Unlikely, but, possible. Now, as I argued previously, you shouldn't be static with your encounter/day paradigm anyway. It's predictable and no fun. One day you might meet 3 deadlies and the next day you meet 7 Easies. Whatever. Mix it up.

But, at no point does that have any implications on the larger world. The fact that D&D game worlds have almost all been built first and then mechanics laid overtop pretty much shows the path here. Other than Eberron, none of the settings were built based on the mechanics. Because, quite frankly, the mechanics first model leads to very inconsistent settings.



Why? Why are we assuming mechanics are used at all? The DM simply rules the results and moves on. There's no engagement with the mechanical side of the game whatsoever. If I want that farmer to get eaten by the wolf, or the farmer to have a nice new wolf pelt jacket, it's got nothing to do with mechanics.

There is zero assumption of mechanical resolution here. The mechanics apply to the PC's and the PC's ONLY.

Again, I point out the opening page of Part 1 in the DMG, where they explicitly state the worldbuilding assumptions that the rules rest upon and explicitly say that you can change these, but need to pay attention to how that might change how the game works in your world. You've yet to address these core assumptions about the world the mechanics exist in, and it's becoming a glaring omission.

And, if those are the only two vampires in the setting, you have some worldbuilding to do: how to players know anything about vampires if there are only two? Does anyone else know anything about vampires? Why and what? How do I introduce vampire lore to the players to build a good adventure around encountering these two vampires? These are very pertinent to adventure design, but require answering questions about the world. If I later have an adventure that has more vampires in it, I'll need to make sure it's consistent with my earlier explanations in my previous adventure or have a good reason for the differences -- which then push out into worldbuilding.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not sure how much clearer I can be to be honest. The mechanics of the game serve the game, not the world. The world is only there because it makes the game more interesting. Heck, you don't actually need a world at all to play D&D. I mean, Basic D&D talks about having a Town and a Dungeon. That's it. You don't need to detail the town at all. And the Dungeon certainly doesn't need to make sense.

And that's worldbuilding. I think you're hung up on the word 'world' as a full and actual world -- everything on a planetary scale? But it's not, it's the place where your game takes place. If I built the Town and Dungeon, I've built a world -- a small, self-contained world. Therein, I make choices for how the game mechanics interact -- when to call for rolls, etc. [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] said that the mechanics require a player to state an action to adjudicate, and that's true, but he missed the part where the player can only frame his action declaration in response to the DM framing the situation. If there's a cliff there, that's what prompts a player to declare an action to climb it -- the world must exist for the players to declare actions within it. So, yes, every single mechanic in D&D rests on the assumption that there's a world there to act within. Even some of the mechanics require specific things to be true in that world -- magic, clerics, etc -- in order to function.

Worldbuilding is required to play. Even if it's basic worldbuilding, and even if it's entirely arbitrary and/or basic to the point of Town and Dungeon.

We world build because it makes the game more interesting. But, world building in D&D is largely outside the actual mechanics of the game.

You continue to maintain this despite being shown multiple mechanics in the DMG for worldbuilding and the core world assumptions the rules rest upon. Is D&D the best at worldbuilding mechanics? Nope, not even close. But you have to do a modicum of worldbuilding to use the rules, even if it's just picking up the core world assumptions of the ruleset.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't know if I agree with that need for consistency. To me, as a DM, I can simply decide the outcomes of any conflicts not involving the PCs. Very much along the lines of "if there's a chance of failure, roll the dice." To me, there's no chance for the townsfolk to fend off the orc horde. The outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Making that decision doesn't mean that there wasn't the consistency that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned. The mechanics were involved, you just decided the outcome. The DM also decides the outcome for the PCs per the 5e rules if the outcome is not uncertain.

You are still acting in an internally consistent manner.

 

[Imaro]

Because it's a trivially true statement -- of course it doesn't follow. But it also doesn't follow that because adventurers find adventures that no one else does or that those adventures have no outside consequences.

But you are deciding this... not the rules. You create or don't create the inconsistency or non-inconsistency of the world, not the rules. There are no rules that claim whatever the adventurers encounter... non-adventurers must also encounter. That's not a function of the game or it's rules that's a function of you choosing to make that so in your world. To do that and then claim it's affecting your worldbuilding is quite frankly silly... of course it is because you're choosing to build a world where it does... but the (encounter) rules of D&D in and of themselves don't force you to do that.