Unpopular opinions go here

[FrogReaver]

Please railroad me!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A one man show still has an audience, and it is the interaction with an audience that makes it theater.

If the lone member of the audience steps out to go to the bathroom, does the performance stop being theater until they walk back inside? Schroedinger's Black Box?

 

[Pedantic]

Have you ever read the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone? It eshews conventional fantasy settings for a sort of a "Contemporary Society where Magic Replaces Technology" If anything, it's near future in its setting as opposed to being in the medieval past. It's got skyscrapers, law firms, brokerage houses, research startups and mega-corporations. They just run on magic rather than technology.

And I mean, it's one of the most blatantly D&D settings I've run across in fantasy literature. Most of the mega-corporations are ruled by liches that can be thought of as smarter versions of Xykon from Order of the Stick.

It's near and dear to my heart, along with Seth Dickinson's Baru Cormorant books. Any piece of fantasy literature that seriously considers the role of central banking is right up my alley, and both those series have more to say beyond that.

That being said, I'd point to progression fantasy (a subgenre I both consume voraciously and think is fundamentally a lot trashier than the books mentions above) for more outright D&D inspired stuff. Mark of the Fool by J.M. Clarke is one of the most overt examples.

 

[Aldarc]

The 5e PHB contains too many spells.

Thematically-focused spell traditions (e.g., fire, air, death, healing, illusion, animal, etc.) would be easier and clearer for new players to understand for purposes of customizing and personalizing their characters than D&D's traditional Eight Traditions.

 

[Reynard]

Sword and sorcery as a subgenre is largely outdated and marginalized in contemporary fantasy literature and has an undeserved, outsized effect on D&D.

D&D has had a bigger effect on fantasy literature over the last 40 years than fantasy literature has had on D&D.

 

[Reynard]

Sorry, this doesn't fly. This is a fundamentally an argument of assumptions and not firsthand experience:

I can tell you with firsthand experience that I have run games with spell point magic systems that have run much faster than Vancian spell-slot casting in D&D. Whether a game has spell points or spell slots tells us nothing about the relative complexity of spellcasting or the decision process that players must work through. That spell point magic systems may have additional layers of complexity is a moot point that moves the goal posts, because additional layers of complexity can also be added to Vancian spell-slot style casting. So pointing out that this is something that spell point systems may hypothetically have without also recognizing that Vancian spell-slot style casting systems may also have their own added layers of complexity is engaging in special pleading.

I'm not sure why you are choosing to engage in this so aggressively, but I will say that vancian is super simple in, say, B/X and more complex in 5E. Why are you asserting that there are no circumstances under which spell point systems could be complex?

 

[overgeeked]

If the lone member of the audience steps out to go to the bathroom, does the performance stop being theater until they walk back inside? Schroedinger's Black Box?

Exactly. "It's only theater if someone's watching" is a particularly...problematic...definition of the art form.

Not quite as out there as the VanderMeers' definition of science fiction ("it takes place in the future"), but it's up there.

 

[Scribe]

Sword and sorcery as a subgenre is largely outdated and marginalized in contemporary fantasy literature and has an undeserved, outsized effect on D&D.

I'd like to read the argument that supports this. To me, the subgenre hardly exists at all in D&D now.

 

[overgeeked]

Sword and sorcery as a subgenre is largely outdated and marginalized in contemporary fantasy literature

Absolutely true. Unfortunately.

and has an undeserved, outsized effect on D&D.

Maybe in the early days, re: OD&D, AD&D, and Basic D&D. But it quickly faded into the background around the publication of AD&D 2E and has only faded further since. In the modern game it's non-existent.

D&D has had a bigger effect on fantasy literature over the last 40 years than fantasy literature has had on D&D.

I hope that's not true. If it is that's incredibly sad.

P1: "We can't save the princess today, I nova'ed on the first fight and I'm out of spell slots. We have to long rest before we can save the princess."

P2: "But she'll be sacrificed tonight!"

P1: "Sounds like a her problem. I need my spells back. Time to sleep."

I'd like to read the argument that supports this. To me, the subgenre hardly exists at all in D&D now.

Agreed.

 

[Tutara]

If the lone member of the audience steps out to go to the bathroom, does the performance stop being theater until they walk back inside? Schroedinger's Black Box?

I suspect you are replying to someone I am no longer interested in listening to, but the answer to this remains the same as the last time you asked it in this very thread.

No, it is not theatre if there is no audience. Perhaps explain to whoever you are responding to that this is an awful analogy.