This sort of statement makes me wonder two things:
1) Are we entering a new era of puritanism where anything "disturbing" shouldn't be included within the game? I mean, aren't there tons of "disturbing elements"? And what are the criteria for what makes something "disturbing?" Or is it more that the implication is that WotC should make D&D more child friendly, or at least PG rated?
It’s really odd the things that make us clutch our pearls. We gleefully cheer the wanton slaughter of sentient creatures just about every single combat of D&D, but don’t you dare include anything “disturbing”.
2) Do younger generations of players not realize that you are "allowed" to choose your character's origin and veer from what is written in the books? That what is written in the books is a general guideline, not carved in stone?
There is an emergent strain of new players who seem to take the rules as written as gospel truth that must not be tampered with. At all. I had someone tell me that if I used even a single house rule I would no longer be playing “real D&D”. At first I laughed thinking it was a joke. He was adamant. Pure RAW or nothing. That made me laugh even harder.
There is an emergent strain of new players who seem to take the rules as written as gospel truth that must not be tampered with. At all. I had someone tell me that if I used even a single house rule I would not longer be playing “real D&D”. At first I laughed thinking it was a joke. He was adamant. Pure RAW or nothing. That made me laugh even harder.
I've seen one of those players turn GM over frustration that I imposed house rules to fit the campaign style rather than strict RAW thn repeatedly put in silly amounts of effort scouring the page & apologize while blaming the hard cover when the players ask questions like "is there anything on the bodies" I don't know if I ever saw it before AL came out taking a hard line against houserules or if that's what caused it, but I definitely blame wotc for not seeming to make any efforts at addressing it. "But RAW sez" rules lawyering was always a thing as far back as I can remember but this is something new
It’s really odd the things that make us clutch our pearls. We gleefully cheer the wanton slaughter of sentient creatures just about every single combat of D&D, but don’t you dare include anything “disturbing”.
There is an emergent strain of new players who seem to take the rules as written as gospel truth that must not be tampered with. At all. I had someone tell me that if I used even a single house rule I would not longer be playing “real D&D”. At first I laughed thinking it was a joke. He was adamant. Pure RAW or nothing. That made me laugh even harder.
I had the issue with 4e and tactical maps.
The player insisted it is impoaaible to stand in the middle of a hall, because it was two squares wide... I stopped playing right there...
On the other issues: I think an official DnD Books should stay child friendly in a way. Slavery yes, but it has to be presented as something bad. It has to be equally among genders (who says the father was willing, the mother not?). It also should not be explicitely cruel, but it has to show that it is important to free them. If that is your quest, i think it is a good thing.
From experience with TV shows and books, I can say: too explicit cruelity drives me off. I don't want that when I want to have a fun evening.
Criminal Minds for example is highly disturbing, as well as Terry Goodkind's legend of the seeker in some parts.
I had the issue with 4e and tactical maps.
The player insisted it is impoaaible to stand in the middle of a hall, because it was two squares wide... I stopped playing right there...
On the other issues: I think an official DnD Books should stay child friendly in a way. Slavery yes, but it has to be presented as something bad. It has to be equally among genders (who says the father was willing, the mother not?). It also should not be explicitely cruel, but it has to show that it is important to free them. If that is your quest, i think it is a good thing.
From experience with TV shows and books, I can say: too explicit cruelity drives me off. I don't want that when I want to have a fun evening.
Criminal Minds for example is highly disturbing, as well as Terry Goodkind's legend of the seeker in some parts.
Sure. And that’s part of the problem: different people have different tastes. What’s offensive to some is Tuesday to others. I don’t think Wizards should go around bowdlerizing their settings in order to try to reach some mythical place where they manage to not offend anyone. But removing anything that could potentially offend anyone? Come on.
I’d much rather they dealt with it like most other entertainment companies, ratings. Slap a mature audience sticker on the Dark Sun books and don’t change the setting. Hell, that would probably boost sales because the edgelords would eat it up. Not every piece of entertainment needs to be for every potential consumer. That way lies blandness.
If some people want the Disney version of D&D, awesome. Go for it. But others don’t. They want a bit more bite to their D&D. The base books should be the lowest common denominator, granted. But not everything should be. Variety and all that about spicy wives.
Look what they’re doing with Ravenloft. Leaning into the setting. It’s the horror setting...so they’re leaning into that. Not stripping that identity away. Dark Sun is about the last legs of a dying world where evil has won and there’s only the faintest glimmer of hope that things will ever improve even slightly. Slavery is not as fundamental to Dark Sun as horror is to Ravenloft, but it is a big part of the setting. Again, take a note from how they’re handling Ravenloft. Promote the tools necessary to handle the touchy topics well in the book. Safety tools and a guide to how to talk about them in session zero and use them in play. Do that with the sensitive topics in Dark Sun.
This sort of statement makes me wonder two things:
1) Are we entering a new era of puritanism where anything "disturbing" shouldn't be included within the game? I mean, aren't there tons of "disturbing elements"? And what are the criteria for what makes something "disturbing?" Or is it more that the implication is that WotC should make D&D more child friendly, or at least PG rated?
2) Do younger generations of players not realize that you are "allowed" to choose your character's origin and veer from what is written in the books? That what is written in the books is a general guideline, not carved in stone?
it is complex the latter is most often not knowing what will work and what will not plus most people have only played with other newbies and the fact most are anxiety-ridden so fear of pushing it too far and the lowest internal motivation of generations can be a bad mix.
It’s really odd the things that make us clutch our pearls. We gleefully cheer the wanton slaughter of sentient creatures just about every single combat of D&D, but don’t you dare include anything “disturbing”.
There is an emergent strain of new players who seem to take the rules as written as gospel truth that must not be tampered with. At all. I had someone tell me that if I used even a single house rule I would not longer be playing “real D&D”. At first I laughed thinking it was a joke. He was adamant. Pure RAW or nothing. That made me laugh even harder.
I've seen one of those players turn GM over frustration that I imposed house rules to fit the campaign style rather than strict RAW thn repeatedly put in silly amounts of effort scouring the page & apologize while blaming the hard cover when the players ask questions like "is there anything on the bodies" I don't know if I ever saw it before AL came out taking a hard line against houserules or if that's what caused it, but I definitely blame wotc for not seeming to make any efforts at addressing it. "But RAW sez" rules lawyering was always a thing as far back as I can remember but this is something new
I think another part of it is the idea of “balance” and rules as “fair”. Many of these newer DMs haven’t read the DMG at all, which is understandable considering the way sooo many people keep saying “the DMG isn’t necessary” so the idea of the DM being final arbiter in a game is lost on these people. I have two people in my group that have been playing D&D and even DMing, starting with 5e, for a couple years. I am new to running 5e regularly but I have read over the books and I asked if they knew how to award XP because I needed to look it up and couldn’t remember the formula. They both pulled out a PHB. Then D&D Beyond. Searched PHB on D&D Beyond. They’d only run the prewritten campaigns.
So it’s this weird world where the PHB and MM are RAW and the DMG ignored and its kind of our own fault that these players who don’t understand the DM role at the table haven’t read the book because we keep saying in reviews the DMG isn’t essential. I disagree, as a DM for 1e, 2e, 3e and now 5e... the DMG is absolutely essential and home brew DMs are shot in the tukus because we are getting a lot of new influx with entitlement and do not understand the idea of cooperative storytelling in an rpg. Those coming from Pathfinder also have a tendency to rules lawyer while a design conceit of 5e is rulings, not rules.
have a friend who started with Pathfinder, doesn’t play with us but his primary problem, and why he hates Critical Role, is because Matt Mercer broke the rules for the flying carpet during their Underdark adventure. Nevermind his players had fun. Mercer was a bad DM because he changed the rules.
Sure. And that’s part of the problem: different people have different tastes. What’s offensive to some is Tuesday to others. I don’t think Wizards should go around bowdlerizing their settings in order to try to reach some mythical place where they manage to not offend anyone. But removing anything that could potentially offend anyone? Come on.
WotC's core market for D&D is early teens. And they typically have the books bought for them by their parents. So they are going to remove anything that will offend the parents of early teens.
Players are free to add in whatever they want from there (hence the guidelines on setting boundaries), but WotC are going to aim for a pretty inoffensive baseline.
No. No it doesn’t depend. That’s a bad argument and horrible business model. Two or three pages is not worth a $50 investment in a setting book. No. That we now think it is is baffling when back in the day, on this very site, we would do calculations of dollar to page count ratios as part of the reviews.
I think another part of it is the idea of “balance” and rules as “fair”. Many of these newer DMs haven’t read the DMG at all, which is understandable considering the way sooo many people keep saying “the DMG isn’t necessary” so the idea of the DM being final arbiter in a game is lost on these people. I have two people in my group that have been playing D&D and even DMing, starting with 5e, for a couple years. I am new to running 5e regularly but I have read over the books and I asked if they knew how to award XP because I needed to look it up and couldn’t remember the formula. They both pulled out a PHB. Then D&D Beyond. Searched PHB on D&D Beyond. They’d only run the prewritten campaigns.
So it’s this weird world where the PHB and MM are RAW and the DMG ignored and its kind of our own fault that these players who don’t understand the DM role at the table haven’t read the book because we keep saying in reviews the DMG isn’t essential. I disagree, as a DM for 1e, 2e, 3e and now 5e... the DMG is absolutely essential and home brew DMs are shot in the tukus because we are getting a lot of new influx with entitlement and do not understand the idea of cooperative storytelling in an rpg. Those coming from Pathfinder also have a tendency to rules lawyer while a design conceit of 5e is rulings, not rules.
have a friend who started with Pathfinder, doesn’t play with us but his primary problem, and why he hates Critical Role, is because Matt Mercer broke the rules for the flying carpet during their Underdark adventure. Nevermind his players had fun. Mercer was a bad DM because he changed the rules.
I never considered the didn't read dmg angle" you might have a point there though but I think the dmg itself and 5es paradoxical rulings not rules thing can shoulder some of the blame there. If you go back to the 2e & 3.x dmg there were a ton of little blurbs like behind the curtain sidebars that were written to put a hand on the GM's shoulder & sketch out the important pitfalls links & moving parts to keep in mind when using stufff like GM's best friend & bonus types from 3.x or treasure &magical items from 2e as till largely word for word great advice & mechanics for 5e show but even areas 5e should shine are quite bad. Your mention of awarding experience made me decide to start there after skimming a list of behind the curtain entries on dmg XXX. the 5e dmg has "stuff" about experience in a few places like 82-84 & 260-261 plus a few stray mentions. The 3.5 dmg has a lot of that same kind of stuff but adds things like this below. I could have done this with topic after topic where 5e is miserably unfinished or lacking dials needed for the gm to manipulate rather than rebuilding entire systems & subsystems, but the act of awarding experience points is a topic critical to even the most basic & rudimentary GMing & it shows just how badly the ball is dropped everywere else where people actually level complaints at.
I haven't run 3.5/PF in years but feel like I have a better grip on the whole awarding experience process & things to consider when going for "rulings not rules" for 3.5 just from having skimmed those than I do for 5e despite running 5e for years & rereading most of the noted 5e dmg bits before I even cracked the 3.5 dmg.
This kind of thing extended to almost any area of the rules. I'm not cherry picking examples though, there was a ton of this
The 1e dmg might be harder to isolate this kind of stuff because it tended to include a lot of that kind of advice inline, but just quickly skimming experience topics alone it's no slouch there either.
Even areas like 5e's much vaunted variant/optional rules rarely even bother noting the kinds of things the GM will need to be aware of, make changes to, & consider when using them. That leaves the GM learning from experience that actually acting as an empowered gm is a dangerous task fraught with frustration & endless trial & error.... Take the "gritty realism" dmg267 5e rule where rest durations are changed...short rest classes vrs long rest classes, item recharge periods, spell & class ability durations & a laundry list of other immediately critical problems using it forces the gm to solve aren't even mentioned leaving the GM to run face first into them at the table with "thrilled" players staring them down.
I may not remember reading those old sidebars all of these years later, but I went into 5e equipped with the skills built up from the knowledge & understanding the sidebars gave from my very first session running 5e on. A newer 5e gm won't have that benefit & is flying completely blind in the dark if they try to make changes or even use the optional/variant stuff provided by wotc. "Rulings not rules" is only useful if the person making them is feels comfortably armed to do more than haphazardly make maybe randomized guesses.
I mostly skipped 4e so won't comment on that edition
