D&D (2024) (+) New Edition Changes for Inclusivity (discuss possibilities)

[Fenris-77]

What are Illithids and Beholders? Are they too mundane to be cosmic horror?

There's always been a faint blush of cosmic horror on the D&D rose. It doesn't overwhelm the scent of moldering dungeon corridors, nor the musk or armor worn to long in the field, but it is part of the overall bouquet.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What are Illithids and Beholders? Are they too mundane to be cosmic horror?

That's the thing, in Lovecract the cosmic horror shatters your mind and drives you mad, in D&D you kill it for the XP and loot.

 

[MGibster]

What are Illithids and Beholders? Are they too mundane to be cosmic horror?

You remember the second Spider-Man movie with Doc Octopus as the villain? There's a scene in an operating room where doctors are attempting to remove the tentacle contraption that's fused to Otto Octavius when they suddenly spring to life and start attacking the medical personnel. It was almost like a scene from a horror movie, which makes sense given director Sam Raimi's history directing movies like The Evil Dead. But Spider-Man 2 isn't a horror movie and the inclusion of Beholders and Mind Flayers doesn't make D&D a horror game.

At it's core, horror is about creating an atmosphere that evokes fear. Throwing a Mind Flayer into your typically D&D game isn't enough to turn it into horror because the player characters are just too damned capable. Mind Flayers and Beholders really aren't any scarier than a myriad of other creatures one might encounter while playing D&D. But you plop that Mind Flayer into the United States of the 1920s and suddenly we've got a horror situation brewing.

I'm not arguing against the inclusion of horror elements in D&D as I agree it can be done and it can be done successfully. I just don't think that's the default setting for D&D and such information is best relegated to the DM's Handbook under ideas for alternate styles of play.

 

[Haldrik]

Since Lovecraft is problematic,

and since insanity is hard work to design sensitively and accurately,

a different approach seems useful.



Personally, I tend to view Aberrants as Neutral Evil, as the missing species between Devil and Demon, seeking to disintegrate reality itself, namely the Material Plane, and doing so by means of evil wishes − and reality warping.

Aberrations are both the consequences of disintegrating reality, and the vehicles of temptation granting wish-like capabilities, at a price.

 

[Wishbone]

You remember the second Spider-Man movie with Doc Octopus as the villain? There's a scene in an operating room where doctors are attempting to remove the tentacle contraption that's fused to Otto Octavius when they suddenly spring to life and start attacking the medical personnel. It was almost like a scene from a horror movie, which makes sense given director Sam Raimi's history directing movies like The Evil Dead. But Spider-Man 2 isn't a horror movie and the inclusion of Beholders and Mind Flayers doesn't make D&D a horror game.

At it's core, horror is about creating an atmosphere that evokes fear. Throwing a Mind Flayer into your typically D&D game isn't enough to turn it into horror because the player characters are just too damned capable. Mind Flayers and Beholders really aren't any scarier than a myriad of other creatures one might encounter while playing D&D. But you plop that Mind Flayer into the United States of the 1920s and suddenly we've got a horror situation brewing.

I'm not arguing against the inclusion of horror elements in D&D as I agree it can be done and it can be done successfully. I just don't think that's the default setting for D&D and such information is best relegated to the DM's Handbook under ideas for alternate styles of play.

I agree with this and would also like to add that that scene is fantastic. Especially after having watched way more of Sam Raimi's horror movies since the first time I saw Spider-Man 2 and forgetting the specifics of the scene.

Having a view of a mind flayer attacking a group of people while the PC's look on helplessly might be similarly effective in establishing the stakes for a horrendous moment in an adventurer's life. Perhaps describing the characters getting a flash vision from the victim and taking psychic damage in a wide area around a mind flayer successfully using Extract Brain on a target with mind flayers in the area getting temporary hit points to match? Drawing on the idea of taste-linked performance eating that allowed mind flayers to share the sensation of brain consumption with a public audience I remember from The Illithiad.

 

[TheSword]

I think we have to be very careful here that we don’t start telling people that they are having bad-wrong-fun. There are lots of things present in a d&d games which are unfortunate. Blindness, deafness, amputation, death, murder, kidnapping, etc etc. These things add gravity and risk to the challenges our characters face.

I sympathize with anyone living with a mental illness. Madness this should be part of the DMG as it is now, so that the DM can make common sense decisions about what is appropriate at their table. For instance I wouldn’t run Paizo’s ‘In Search of Sanity’ for my schizophrenic brother.

Out of the Abyss, uses involuntary madness as a curse of the gods... normally a loss of agency in a fictional sense. I’m pretty comfortable with this. They implement the rules by adding a flaw to the players character that they are requested to roleplay... but not forced to. The writers aren’t saying it is someone’s fault, or that they aren’t worthy because of it. It’s just a risk posed by that territory. I do think players should be warned in advance if that was the campaign that’s going to be run.

There are some settings, I’m thinking Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer 40k, etc where madness is a more important to the setting. This isn’t a problem provided people know what they’re getting into.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm not arguing against the inclusion of horror elements in D&D as I agree it can be done and it can be done successfully. I just don't think that's the default setting for D&D and such information is best relegated to the DM's Handbook under ideas for alternate styles of play.

Default setting? No. That said, there have been horror elements in the game form the get go. How heavily a DM leans into that is more about execution that what is present or not present in the base material.

 

[Umbran]

And now you’re trying to act as though I called the “art of persuasion”(which sounds creepy as hell) dangerous nonsense? LOL

Mod Note:

I told everyone to make this about gaming. That does not mean "take one last potshot and then make it about gaming.

 

[Wishbone]

Since Lovecraft is problematic,

and since insanity is hard work to design sensitively and accurately,

a different approach seems useful.



Personally, I tend to view Aberrants as Neutral Evil, as the missing species between Devil and Demon, seeking to disintegrate reality itself, namely the Material Plane, and doing so by means of evil wishes − and reality warping.

Aberrations are both the consequences of disintegrating reality, and the vehicles of temptation granting wish-like capabilities, at a price.

What defines aberrations has so much wiggle room I'm a little unsure of the inherent value in keeping them as a distinct type in a hypothetical 6E. Are they cosmic horrors, psychic creatures, simply weird, or all of the above and more? If we're trying to unify aberrations by saying they're inhospitable to the reality of a setting it might be worth introducing ways they don't sit right with baseline assumptions for how we expect the rules to interact with monsters.

 

[Cadence]

What defines aberrations has so much wiggle room I'm a little unsure of the inherent value as keeping them as a distinct type in a hypothetical 6E. Are they cosmic horrors, psychic creatures, simply weird, or all of the above and more? If we're trying to unify aberrations by saying they're inhospitable to the reality of a setting it might be worth introducing ways they don't sit right with baseline assumptions for how we expect the rules to interact with monsters.

The 1d4chan page kind of sums up the way it seems to have been done:

I'd kind of like the aberrations to be the creatures from the Far Realms (the alien things beyond the great wheel and the inner planes) and the things they touched and corrupted.

Part of the problem I have sorting things is where all the chaosy-alien things fit in. Is Limbo a plane exemplifying doing whatever they want, or one for destroying order? Is there a great outer entropy that wants the universe to decay to nothing that even the inhabitants of Limbo would rebel against? Are the things from the Far Realms something like a tentacly Borg with code that feels non-sensical that are trying to rewrite everything? Are the far realms creatures and the greater entropy the two great things opposed to all of the rest of creation?