Unpopular opinions go here

[Shardstone]

Any time I have to adjust a module to fit my group it is more work than if I just ran it on the fly.

I dont understand. If you run games on the fly, its common sense you dont find adventures useful for prep. Not all homebrew is on the fly for every dm, and the opinion of someone who runs on the fly doesnt matter when it comew to running published material.

 

[Reynard]

I dont understand. If you run games on the fly, its common sense you dont find adventures useful for prep. Not all homebrew is on the fly for every dm, and the opinion of someone who runs on the fly doesnt matter when it comew to running published material.

I run on the fly because published adventures are too much work. And running on the fly does not mean you don't prep. You prep differently.

 

[Shardstone]

I run on the fly because published adventures are too much work. And running on the fly does not mean you don't prep. You prep differently.

No, you just dont know what on the fly means and said something meaning something else entirely.

 

[Reynard]

No, you just dont know what on the fly means and said something meaning something else entirely.

You don't get to tell me what I meant. I gave you my definition. You aren't required to be instantly abrasive, you know.

 

[nevin]

it's not for understanding magic, its for communicating about it in Official Capacities, usually with other wizards, everybody can use the Arcana skill but that doesn't mean everybody understands a language, so it serves the same purpose as any other language, some things you can't even attempt to understand if you don't first understand the language they're written in, your ranger might have expertise in nature but they're not going to be reading that book on dragons if they don't read draconic, or at least, they're going to be attempting to read it at an incredible disadvantage.

edit: if i hand you a science book in a language you can't read and say 'don't worry, with a high enough science skill you'll understand all of this' that doesn't mean it's not going to be infinitely easier process if i hand you the same book written in a language you do understand.

so why don't we have high scientist language in reality? It just seems like a very complicated solution with a skill tax to a problem that doesn't exist. There are lots of words i don't know that scientists in special fields will, but trying to emulate that by having a complete language seems strange to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Imquoting Micah back at him. He says stuff like this all the time

I have never told anyone they shouldn't play how they like.

 

[Faolyn]

Again, give it a try. Go for it. Nothing stopping you.

You asked why the game doesn't do it as a baseline. You were answered. It's not done as a baseline because it's a PITA and it grinds the game to a halt with very little in the way of making the game more fun. If you didn't want an answer to the question, why did you ask it?

I've done it in my games. It's actually not at all bad. We use ASL signs to indicate what language we're speaking, and switch signs when we switch languages. My players, at least, are usually more than willing to deliberately misunderstand each other when not speaking the same language.

Also, as Micah said, it's pretty rare that there will be no shared languages at all. And anyway, in a D&D-type game, just have the listener roll Insight and then (if the speaker is an NPC), tell them what they understood based on their roll.

 

[Aldarc]

Okay. Well, you are welcome to ignore my thoughts on the matter. Scrolling on by takes less "breath" than pointing out how you don't care.

I think that your criticism here would have landed more truthfully if I had responded to your post out of the blue, but that was not the case. I posted my unpopular opinion in a thread for unpopular opinions in response to absolutely no one and in reaction to no one or post in particular. YOU could have scrolled by and ignored my thoughts on the matter, but need I point out that YOU chose to engage my post first?

I don't see why this is a problem. AC and HP are passive as well.

When I said "stat," was referring to ability scores. I would also note that AC and HP are derived stats. I have less an issue with these character stats. I apologize if there was any misunderstanding that arose from my use of terms.

 

[CreamCloud0]

so why don't we have high scientist language in reality? It just seems like a very complicated solution with a skill tax to a problem that doesn't exist. There are lots of words i don't know that scientists in special fields will, but trying to emulate that by having a complete language seems strange to me.

‘Languages are a thing that exist’ is a very complicated solution?

I was just trying to suggest an interesting yet tolerable midpoint between ‘common is the only language worth knowing’ and ‘the players have no assured methods of communication with anyone’

And sure, we don’t have a ‘language of science’ but it feels like something that could exist, hell its not too different to how all the important scholarly books used to be written in latin right?

Edit: is there any reason why high arcane is being singled out here? How is ‘the language used to talk about magic concepts’ any different to the merchant trading language or adventurers having their shared language?

 

[nevin]

‘Languages are a thing that exist’ is a very complicated solution?

I was just trying to suggest an interesting yet tolerable midpoint between ‘common is the only language worth knowing’ and ‘the players have no assured methods of communication with anyone’

And sure, we don’t have a ‘language of science’ but it feels like something that could exist, hell its not too different to how all the important scholarly books used to be written in latin right?

Edit: is there any reason why high arcane is being singled out here? How is ‘the language used to talk about magic concepts’ any different to the merchant trading language or adventurers having their shared language?

no they were written in latin because the scholar's communicated in latin and it was the language of the developing world.

Just like most scholarly articles now are written in English because it's the language of the developed world for the most part. At least the language of the richest parts of the world.

No high arcane just jumped out at me as the most overcomplicated. In general I think a language should have a reason to exist beyond the fact that what is talked about is complicated. Once a language is in play the cost to change to another language is HUUUGe. I like things to make sense and barring some secret society trying to control all the magic I can't come up with a single reason a group would create an entire language just for their profession. merchant trading language is what common was originally in 1e. in 1e common was supposed to be a simplified means of communication that was used by people from various cultures in trade.
While I still feel the same way about it that i do about adding languages simply for complexity It does have precident now that common has somehow morphed into fantasy English.