D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[gorice]

Syndrome in this case was (and still is) absolutely right.

Disparity, along with rarity, is what makes things special; and when everything is on the same level - whatever that level may be - there is no disparity, and thus much less or no special-ness.

This is true of magic, and of characters, and of real-world people.

Where is that furtive pygmy when you need it?

 

[Lanefan]

Assuming that's true, that would arguably say something about what the "vast majority" of players enjoy (and what they don't).

Yes. It says the vast majority of players are doing their job as players in a game; that job being to reduce the challenges facing them as much as possible in order to more easily and-or reliably win.

The game doesn't need to do their job for them; and that today's game in many ways does do their job for them makes it superficially more enjoyable and fun in comparison to early versions, but eventually that superficiality wears off and then what have you got?

 

[Lanefan]

Well... this is I guess the difference between you both and me. In my opinion... if you are going to handwave shelter, then it doesn't matter the reasoning for handwaving it.

Whether it's "Shelter is plentiful and thus you find shelter for the night in the wilderness" or "You set up your Tiny Hut in the wilderness"... the effect is exactly the same. Nothing is happening. No event occurs as a result of camping out overnight. You camp, it ends, you get up the next morning and move on. Why it didn't happen doesn't matter, because things that don't happen don't matter. At least not to me.

When the party are in peaceful lands with plentiful shelter etc. then yes, there's no difference.

When the party are in the wilderness, facing adverse weather in rough country where lighting a campfire might pose a serious risk of being noticed by foes, a party with LTH can completely bypass any environmental threat the DM might want to present. A party without it, that has to find shelter and warmth for itself, is subject to these threats and risks; and that's the big difference here.

 

[Lanefan]

Now... if we want to argue that I as the DM am probably more prone to not putting an encounter in front of the players because they are in a Tiny Hut... I will accept that argument. That might very well be true. If the party was out camping and not in a Tiny Hut maybe I might be more willing to throw a nighttime encounter their way? To be honest, I have no real idea what they answer to that is, because as a DM I just find the whole D&D process of worrying about camping to be tedious. But I will concede that could be true.

But then again... any time there's a situation where I feel like an encounter could/would/should occur to people inside a Tiny Hut... I can get one to happen regardless-- a simple Dispel Magic can take care of it. If I feel like at this moment in the narrative it's time for the party to see what happens when they don't have their Hut... Dispel Magic sends it away and combat potentially engaged. And thus the Story and Narrative is upheld... that one time when their Tiny Hut didn't save them was the time they were harassed by someone who could dispel it.

Like I said... if some of you wished you could have more "attack the party while they're sleeping" encounters, then of course I understand why Tiny Hut blows. Or if you wished to have more "attack the party from the darkness when they can't see the monsters", then of course I understand why Darkvision blows. But that's just not 5E. Those two tropes apparently just don't hold enough water anymore to make the designers want to allow for them in the rules. And there's nothing we can do about it except remove the offending bits from the game on our own.

Specific encounters e.g. wandering monsters etc. are one thing; but what about the environment itself?

If they're stuck out in the wild on a night when it's 5 degrees C with a steady rain on a 30-knot south-easter and they don't have LTH, the environment itself becomes at best a noticeable inconvenience and at worst a serious threat. If they can't find a sheltered haven then even putting up tents won't be easy, and forget about a campfire for warmth. And yes, spells like Endure Cold can be cast, but they don't last forever and they represent spell resources not available for other things. Never mind that I wouldn't want to be the poor wizard stuck trying to study a spellbook in the morning in conditions like that...if nothing else, spellbooks tend not to like getting wet...

 

[MichaelSomething]

Syndrome in this case was (and still is) absolutely right.

Disparity, along with rarity, is what makes things special; and when everything is on the same level - whatever that level may be - there is no disparity, and thus much less or no special-ness.

This is true of magic, and of characters, and of real-world people.

Yet I can never find players for my COMMONER campaign...

 

[Lanefan]

Yet I can never find players for my COMMONER campaign...

That is the one true way of starting a zero-to-hero journey, though.

 

[DEFCON 1]

When the party are in peaceful lands with plentiful shelter etc. then yes, there's no difference.

When the party are in the wilderness, facing adverse weather in rough country where lighting a campfire might pose a serious risk of being noticed by foes, a party with LTH can completely bypass any environmental threat the DM might want to present. A party without it, that has to find shelter and warmth for itself, is subject to these threats and risks; and that's the big difference here.

I don't disagree at all. But this is a specific type of storyline that I don't believe is predominant in 5E play. Tomb of Annihilation had a bit of survival play dealing with heat, and Rime of the Frostmaiden had a bunch dealing with cold... both of which as we all know as people began running these campaigns, could be completely negated by certain spells if the DM allowed them to be taken. But of course the issue was that neither story of these adventures was about dealing with the conditions-- it instead was about Acererak and Auril. You could play these stories while completely ignoring the heat/cold if you wanted to (as far as I could tell, correct me if I'm wrong) especially if you had the right load-out of spells. The weather was an obstacle... but it wasn't the plot. It wasn't the narrative. Instead, the story was dealing with these villains and their machinations.

And it's because of this that the game I suspect (purely my own intuition based upon what we've seen in the books and come out since then) that the game does not see these stories like "dealing with the weather" as an adventure in itself, and why it makes it possible to completely bypass it through game mechanics. The mechanics are there to allow tables who don't care about stories regarding dealing with the weather to ignore them if they so choose. While at the same time through "Rulings not Rules" allow other DMs to remove the offending magic and spells from the game themselves if they really want to try to make the game work that way.

But at the end of the day WotC made ignoring the "survival game" part of D&D easy and default through its features and spells they presented, and made playing the "survival game" the houserule version a particular DM would have to try and cobble together themself. Whether or not that was the right call is anyone's opinion.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And the success of 5e tells us that there is virtually no chance of that situation improving. Essentially, the gaming community is getting what it asked for.

Heh heh... and there's a pretty good chance they are happier for it. Things aren't "improving" because I suspect a large amount of 5E players don't think there's anything to improve.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't disagree at all. But this is a specific type of storyline that I don't believe is predominant in 5E play. Tomb of Annihilation had a bit of survival play dealing with heat, and Rime of the Frostmaiden had a bunch dealing with cold... both of which as we all know as people began running these campaigns, could be completely negated by certain spells if the DM allowed them to be taken. But of course the issue was that neither story of these adventures was about dealing with the conditions-- it instead was about Acererak and Auril. You could play these stories while completely ignoring the heat/cold if you wanted to (as far as I could tell, correct me if I'm wrong) especially if you had the right load-out of spells. The weather was an obstacle... but it wasn't the plot. It wasn't the narrative. Instead, the story was dealing with these villains and their machinations.

And it's because of this that the game I suspect (purely my own intuition based upon what we've seen in the books and come out since then) that the game does not see these stories like "dealing with the weather" as an adventure in itself, and why it makes it possible to completely bypass it through game mechanics. The mechanics are there to allow tables who don't care about stories regarding dealing with the weather to ignore them if they so choose. While at the same time through "Rulings not Rules" allow other DMs to remove the offending magic and spells from the game themselves if they really want to try to make the game work that way.

But at the end of the day WotC made ignoring the "survival game" part of D&D easy and default through its features and spells they presented, and made playing the "survival game" the houserule version a particular DM would have to try and cobble together themself. Whether or not that was the right call is anyone's opinion.

They didn't make it easy to "ignore the survival game", they made it default to obliviate the survival aspects. Worse still is that they took areas that survival might impact (ie recovery & carrying supplies) & dialed them so far beyond 11 on the dial that a dash of survival elements for zest doesn't even impact them in any meaningful degree.

 

[Cruentus]

Specific encounters e.g. wandering monsters etc. are one thing; but what about the environment itself?

If they're stuck out in the wild on a night when it's 5 degrees C with a steady rain on a 30-knot south-easter and they don't have LTH, the environment itself becomes at best a noticeable inconvenience and at worst a serious threat. If they can't find a sheltered haven then even putting up tents won't be easy, and forget about a campfire for warmth. And yes, spells like Endure Cold can be cast, but they don't last forever and they represent spell resources not available for other things. Never mind that I wouldn't want to be the poor wizard stuck trying to study a spellbook in the morning in conditions like that...if nothing else, spellbooks tend not to like getting wet...

Yup. In 5e - My players - "We cast Leomund's here in the dungeon, and we eat our goodberries. We poke our heads out in the morning."

Now, you might say "well, what about wandering monsters". Sure. That can happen, but unless I'm specifically trying to counter the party's abilities, the chances of either something powerful enough to bury the hut, or dispel it out of hand (and how does the creature know its a Tiny Hut?), etc., are going to be slim. I had an enemy seal off the crypt where the party slept in the hut with Wall of Stone. They, of course, just blasted their way out. And the encounter outside of the Crypt was still underwhelming, even though the enemy knew the party's abilities, had grunts, and was waiting for them. Sure, I could have 'killed' the party, but that would appear obvious to the party, and be considered "adversarial DMing". There is even less chance of something coming upon them in the wilderness - the Hut is essentially hidden. and not that big.

In my OSE game?

Party: Player 1 "I'll go forage for some firewood"
Player 2: I'll go with you.
Player 3: I'll set up the cooking utensils and get the fire going with what we have.
Player 4: I'll walk a perimeter.
Players 1 and 2 return with X hours of wood to burn on the fire.
Player 3: Makes a Wis check for their cooking. Success is a +1 to the rest roll. (uses up 4 rations for the meal)
Player 4: Returns from the perimeter, settles down with everyone around the fire and tells a story. Rolls a Cha check, success = another +1 to rest roll.
Players assign watches and there is a roll to see if anyone falls asleep during watch.
Players then make a Rest Roll (Con check, with modifiers) depending on time of year , weather conditions, whether they have a fire, cooking pots, and bedrolls and/or tents. Success = good night's rest (heal, able to operate at full capacity) - remember this is not 5e.

Some may called this "pixel bitching" or getting way down into the minutiae of exploration, and I'd argue 1) this is how we enjoy playing, and 2) once you've done it two or three times, it becomes super quick and fast.

Players have to manage their resources for travel (food, water, wood, if they're travelling somewhere they may not be able to find it readily, and take into account time of year (travelling/camping in the winter STINKS), and balance this with their own encumbrance, and everyone is involved, and they rotate roles so its not always (17 Cha player always tells stories around the fire, cleric always cooks the meals).

We find all of this helps build the world out, including what they encounter when they're foraging for water or wood, what they find going in and out of a place, and figuring out the best place to site their camp (comfortable? good line of sight? cave (what about its denizens?), etc.

Of course, and it goes without saying, YMMV, and many prefer to just handwave travel and exploration, unless its a combat or something intrinsic to the adventure. And that's fine. I find that for myself, the slower pace, the "management" of the adventure, and the exploration (getting there and back again), are a lot of the fun. And of course, we can also handwave things if we want to, but the game doesn't hand wave them for me.

Edit: and I agree with @DEFCON 1 , there are likely a lot of players who came into the game in 5e who would not like this style of game. Of course, its also a style they didn't learn the game in either. My son plays 5e, and he sometimes complains about the ease of the system, and its complexity, but some of that could also be my talking about the older editions, and how they did things as a contrast.