Unpopular opinions go here

[overgeeked]

Oh I've done 1st level PCs with big backstories.

Take an existing high level character I want to play in a new level 1 campaign. They have lots of fun backstory and you can go right into playing them as a narratively developed character already.

D&D energy drainers and multiple planes provide easy reasons to be someplace new at 1st level with almost no resources.

That’s actually pretty great. Too bad level drain is gone.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh I've done 1st level PCs with big backstories.

Take an existing high level character I want to play in a new level 1 campaign. They have lots of fun backstory and you can go right into playing them as a narratively developed character already.

D&D energy drainers and multiple planes provide easy reasons to be someplace new at 1st level with almost no resources.

It would be fun to have a campaign start with the party getting un-petrified a century or more after losing a fight, finding all of their resources, of all sorts, are gone for a variety of obvious reasons, and having to restart their careers.

 

[J.Quondam]

Oh I've done 1st level PCs with big backstories.

Take an existing high level character I played before that I want to continue playing in a new campaign. They have lots of fun backstory and I can go right into playing them as a narratively developed character already.

D&D energy drainers and multiple planes provide easy reasons to be someplace new at 1st level with almost no resources.

Holy mackerel, that's an awesome idea! Yoinking!

 

[Gradine]

Isn't that just hit points?

A more specific example of what I'm talking about is the way "Luck" works in Monster of the Week; characters have a limited number of points to turn any roll into a success or reduce all harm from a single source to 0, effectively letting you say "no" to being killed, at least until your Luck runs out.

Star Wars D6 let you use Force Points to similar effect, though Force Points are more plentiful in that sense.

 

[MGibster]

Most players don't care about your world-building efforts and results.

This is the primary reason I don't go into too many details when building my own settings. Most of my players aren't going to care about geography, major exports, etc., etc. Hell, a lot of them don't care all that much about whatever published setting you happen to be playing in.

 

[MGibster]

Of course there is a rest of the world!

The rest of the world is the place that Americans travel to, where we meet other Americans and talk about how hard it is to get a decent hamburger.

Or ice. I don't know what crime ice committed against Europe, but it must have been horrible!

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Canada's been metric for decades and I still use miles for distance, feet for elevation, feet-inches and pounds for someone's height and weight, inches for snowfall and rainfall, and so on; and (most importantly!) pints for beer. But I also use celsius for temperature, litres/millilitres for grocery items, kmh for wind and car speed, and so on.

This may be due to …… your age….

I’m the same way but my kids are fully metric. It doesn’t help that Canada’s system is so intertwined with the US. It’s our largest trading partner so we’re kind of forced to deal with Imperial. All my tool sets have both imperial and metric fittings.

It is... much more complicated then that. Technically it is 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, which sounds arbitrary but is based on a formula that is also... weirdly arbitrary (specifically, "the amount of work required from a horse to pull 150 pounds out of a hole 220 feet deep").

The typical horse can produce up to 15 horsepower on its own over the short term.

Which is why it’s on the list of antiquated measuring systems. But I was just kidding around.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We're of an age.

Are you suggesting this is a Millenial or GenZ phenomenon? I admit I don't play with many of them outside running games at cons.

Generational or not, its always possible the people involved on some level are not playing the game they're playing down in their head. What I mean by that is that zero-to-hero is a D&D standard, but it isn't a standard in every fantasy game; in some of them, having done some great things before the start of play not only wouldn't be odd, it'd be expected.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Or ice. I don't know what crime ice committed against Europe, but it must have been horrible!

The Titanic…..

 

[deganawida]

Generational or not, its always possible the people involved on some level are not playing the game they're playing down in their head. What I mean by that is that zero-to-hero is a D&D standard, but it isn't a standard in every fantasy game; in some of them, having done some great things before the start of play not only wouldn't be odd, it'd be expected.

Good point, hadn’t considered that.