D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Undrave]

WotC doesn't own catfolk in general though. That scene with the fish and the holy warrior could just as easily have come straight out of Steve Jackson's Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

They don’t own dragon people in general either. The name ‘Tabaxi’ is copyrightable, even if the concept of cat people is not.

Eh. Most of the adventure was about them trying to get through a door.

As for enemies, the guards were fairly normal humans, outmatched by Holga. They avoided the intellect devourers, ran from the dragon and the displacer beast, and let Zenk handle the Thayan assassins. Sofina missed (deliberately?) with her meteor swarm and then they ganged up on her and beat her with a magic-suppressing bracelet.

They weren't even planning on fighting Sofina in the first place.

If you accept that players don't need to have near-100% chance of victory, you can run these kinds of adventures at low level. If the players decide to go back and not only stop Sofina's plot, but decide to stick around and fight the 17th level wizard in melee, well, hopefully they have good dice. It's certainly not impossible to beat a lone wizard who relies mostly on evocations, but someone could die--fortunately you have a resurrection item right there.

They’re certainly not starting adventurer as they had multiple adventures as thieves before the story. I’d place them closer to level 10 than level 3.

Funny how the quest to get the Helm of Disjunction turned out to be completely pointless, since the treasure wasn't even in there. Reminded me of the Canto Bight sequence in the Last Jedi is a way, although it was certainly better done.

In the end I don’t think it was useless because of what it did for the characters and what it allowed them to find other than the helmet. It was also a fairly logical goal to have with what they knew at the time. If nothing else, it got the assassins off their back

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That makes no sense. I'm talking about classic D&D, not the MCU.

You are drawing an arbitrary line through the product line and saying "this product is the true identity of the implied setting, but THOSE products are not."

Every time someone points to other products in the same line, you are discounting them because they're not the "true expression," which isn't a characterization anyone, most especially TSR, would have ever recognized.

Mystara isn't just the map in back of the Isle of Dread as much as you -- or I! -- may prefer it to be. It's also all of those later additions that included straight-up joke settings, a few problematic adventures and gazetteers, and the later boxed sets (even the 2E ones, sorry, everyone!).

The Forgotten Realms isn't just the gray box. It's not even Ed Greenwood's original articles in Dragon. It's everything that's come since as well, including the movie.

And D&D as a whole isn't any one point on a line, but the line itself. OD&D includes all of the supplemental booklets, which both expand and fundamentally change the game. AD&D isn't just the three core books, but garbage like Gargoyle and the Forest Oracle and the completely superfluous books like Greyhawk Adventures, as much as I may hate it.

You can choose to exclude stuff from play at your table, but when characterizing any of these lines, you can't say that just a portion of them is the "real" expression. It's all of those things in the line, for better or worse.

Instead of dealing in absolutes, dial it back from "D&D is X" to "I prefer D&D to be X, meaning using only the books up to Y point." Granted, that would lop off five pages of this thread, but maybe that's OK.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are drawing an arbitrary line through the product line and saying "this product is the true identity of the implied setting, but THOSE products are not."

Every time someone points to other products in the same line, you are discounting them because they're not the "true expression," which isn't a characterization anyone, most especially TSR, would have ever recognized.

Mystara isn't just the map in back of the Isle of Dread as much as you -- or I! -- may prefer it to be. It's also all of those later additions that included straight-up joke settings, a few problematic adventures and gazetteers, and the later boxed sets (even the 2E ones, sorry, everyone!).

The Forgotten Realms isn't just the gray box. It's not even Ed Greenwood's original articles in Dragon. It's everything that's come since as well, including the movie.

And D&D as a whole isn't any one point on a line, but the line itself. OD&D includes all of the supplemental booklets, which both expand and fundamentally change the game. AD&D isn't just the three core books, but garbage like Gargoyle and the Forest Oracle and the completely superfluous books like Greyhawk Adventures, as much as I may hate it.

You can choose to exclude stuff from play at your table, but when characterizing any of these lines, you can't say that just a portion of them is the "real" expression. It's all of those things in the line, for better or worse.

Instead of dealing in absolutes, dial it back from "D&D is X" to "I prefer D&D to be X, meaning using only the books up to Y point." Granted, that would lop off five pages of this thread, but maybe that's OK.

I never said the original expression is the "real" one; that's a complete muscharacterization of my point. I'm saying that there is a version of D&D where magic is less commonplace and in-your-face, and that version is just as much D&D as any other version. When did I say original D&D is real D&D? Seriously, show me the quote you're basing this on.

Now, I usually do prefer earlier versions of the game, but that's beside the point in this discussion.

 

[Undrave]

Honestly, the hot air balloon was one of the few things that didn't make me say the movie's setting was too high fantasy for me. Given the technology levels suggested in the PHB, hot air balloons are completely reasonable, especially since the Leonardos of the D&D world can actually interrogate inhabitants of the elemental planes about hot air rising and such.

Hot air balloons are terrible forms of transportation without additional things being applied to them, so they don't really break most settings, are a good visual and can be an exciting location to stage a battle. (Hope you didn't plan on using a lot of fire spells today!)

Especially considering a hot air balloon is just applying principles that were known by at least the 3rd century. It’s not like it depends on particularly advanced technology.

See Sky lantern - Wikipedia

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When five pages of this thread is you saying everyone else isn't getting your point, it might be worth considering that your point isn't being expressed as clearly as you think it is, @Micah Sweet.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm talking about the setting as originally expressed, though, in all those settings actually. Just about everything becomes crazier and more fantastic over time and development.

For most fans of the setting, the Gazetteers are the "original expression" and that alone is not low magic. Mystara wasn't a real setting before Dawn of Emperors, it was a bare minimum map and some vague notes in the Isle of Dread. Most fans of the setting would consider the Gaz lines the start of Mystara proper.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Especially considering a hot air balloon is just applying principles that were known by at least the 3rd century. It’s not like it depends on particularly advanced technology.

See Sky lantern - Wikipedia

Hot air balloons were invented thousands of years ago in Krynn. Unfortunately, they were invented by gnomes, which means they had to keep being reinvented every few years after the previous inventors fell to their deaths.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For most fans of the setting, the Gazetteers are the "original expression" and that alone is not low magic. Mystara wasn't a real setting before Dawn of Emperors, it was a bare minimum map and some vague notes in the Isle of Dread. Most fans of the setting would consider the Gaz lines the start of Mystara proper.

Fair enough. My experience with Mystara is limited to the KonB, the Isle of Dread, and the B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When five pages of this thread is you saying everyone else isn't getting your point, it might be worth considering that your point isn't being expressed as clearly as you think it is, @Micah Sweet.

There are people on this thread who get what I'm talking about, so no, I think my point is clear enough.

 

[Undrave]

Hot air balloons were invented thousands of years ago in Krynn. Unfortunately, they were invented by gnomes, which means they had to keep being reinvented every few years after the previous inventors fell to their deaths.

This is why nobody likes the Gnome Tinkerers: REALLY bad at leaving written notes behind.