D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Oofta]

From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to Planet of the Apes, the stranger in a strange land or fish out of water trope is pretty common in fiction. The protagonist(s) is somewhere they don't belong, have never been, no one knows them and they have to survive. There's also the related stranger in your own home trope where everything is different or nobody remembers you. I did the stranger in a strange land in a previous campaign long ago when the PCs were sent to a version of the world where the BBEG had won, in part because she had been given a vision that the PCs could stop her so she murdered them in their sleep when they were still children.

In a stranger in a strange land campaign, I simply don't see how most background features would work. The PCs may establish relationships and a reputation wherever they are, but it will take some effort and time. This may be a rare campaign setting*, but it doesn't change the question. Should background features work as written, if so how is it justified?

The reason I ask is because if you agree that the background feature would not work in a stranger in a strange land scenario, then we are just discussing under what circumstances the circumstances apply. If you think that the background feature would always work no matter what, I would call that either a supernatural ability or illogical.

*I disagree a bit, I've given examples of published campaigns do it but that's not the point.

 

[James Gasik]

Ever watch a show where the main character, no matter where they go, ends up in a situation that suits their skill set? I believe the trope is called a Busman's Holiday. Illogical or not, it's oft the basis for many entertaining plots.

Take the non-canon James Bond film, Never Say Never Again (a remake of Thunderball). Early on, there are concerns about Bond's age and health so he's sent to a spa. While he's there, he just so happens to stumble onto a SPECTRE conspiracy in action! Nobody complains about how illogical this is, because it's entertaining.

Strange coincidences abound in fiction, often in some very classic stories. Prisoner of Zenda-style plots where you encounter someone who looks almost exactly like another character, dramatic twists that tie character motivations to the main plot, and so on. Or heck, as the Fighter's Handbook put it:

So the idea that a character could encounter old allies (or enemies) or other circumstances where their background comes up in strange situations is perfectly cromulent, especially in a fantasy game.

 

[Oofta]

Ever watch a show where the main character, no matter where they go, ends up in a situation that suits their skill set? I believe the trope is called a Busman's Holiday. Illogical or not, it's oft the basis for many entertaining plots.

Take the non-canon James Bond film, Never Say Never Again (a remake of Thunderball). Early on, there are concerns about Bond's age and health so he's sent to a spa. While he's there, he just so happens to stumble onto a SPECTRE conspiracy in action! Nobody complains about how illogical this is, because it's entertaining.

Strange coincidences abound in fiction, often in some very classic stories. Prisoner of Zenda-style plots where you encounter someone who looks almost exactly like another character, dramatic twists that tie character motivations to the main plot, and so on. Or heck, as the Fighter's Handbook put it:
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Sure, and that's fine. Backgrounds along with proficiencies and class abilities can give you an edge on those conspiracies they stumble across or when by happenstance they're in the right place at the right time.

But this ...

So the idea that a character could encounter old allies (or enemies) or other circumstances where their background comes up in strange situations is perfectly cromulent, especially in a fantasy game.

... is not related to what was stated above at all.

If you don't want to, or can't, justify how the backgrounds features for PCs in a stranger in a strange land scenario work you're just dodging a simple straightforward question.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

After the OGL? No, I'm switching to Tales of the Valiant, I will allow my players to bring some things to the table if they want, as an experiment, but not the whole game.

Also the fact that WotC failed to address any problem with the Monk and also gave Bard subclass solely to make Monk redundant and useless rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Maxperson]

Why does figuring out a way of making a player ability work fall upon anyone but the player?

It's shared because the DM controls the world, so if he doesn't work in ways for the ability to work, often an ability will never or almost never get used. Now the DM isn't responsible to point out those times when the ability could work. It's still up to the player to recognize those times and declare the use.

 

[Maxperson]

Heck I've had games where we went to a mirror universe where we switched places with our PCs and were the villains of the realm.

For the most part I agree with you about backgrounds not always working. However, that there is one of the few times where folk hero would still work! You'd just be a "folk" villain where bad guys give you a place to rest refuge from authorities, unless it's too dangerous.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There is no one true way to run games.

Yes. That is my point, too.

I just wouldn't enjoy a game as much where no matter where I go, what plane of existence, what time period, every background somehow just works.

That's an oversimplification of working within the parameters of the fiction to find a way to make it work, using story, and back-and-forth with the player both in and out of character. Again, my point, which differs from Hriston's, would be to do it only IF it comes up naturally. IE if the player cares enough to try to make it work.

To me if, to use an example that happened in a game I played, our PCs time traveled 200 years into the past and I still have people recognizing me as a folk hero then that to me is illogical.

Sure. But there's about a billion other ways to do it than to have the NPCs simply recognize the PC from the future as a folk hero. I can't even begin to describe all the ways because it would depend on the PC, the NPC in question, the town, the scenario, the story, all of which would change game-to-game, but I wouldn't have any trouble coming up with something that works with the whole thing holistically. I wouldn't wind up with something illogical - this is my point. You think that a DM who allows it is less logical-minded than you. That's simply not true.

Heck I've had games where we went to a mirror universe where we switched places with our PCs and were the villains of the realm. I just don't know how you could build a case for several background features in either of those situations.

I mean, that sounds like they'd have reverse backgrounds? It depends on the NPCs they run into, the situation they're in, and ultimately if their damn background ever comes up.

Those were extreme but travelling to another pocket realm (e.g. Ravenloft), another plane of existence (e.g. Avernus) or just halfway across the world where you generally only encounter natives who have never heard of you before (e.g. Chult) are all things that happen in published modules.

Yeah, I was running Decent into Avernus one of the rare times any of my players ever tried to use their background feature. They had a criminal background. I'm gonna make a long story short here (but trust me that there's a lot more details than this sounds) but they fairly quickly made a contact in the local underground. This opened a lot of problems for both the player and the party, because it's not like it was a 100% beneficial relationship (and the underground had its own agenda that didn't always jive with the party's). At any rate, it added a lot to the game and wasn't at all difficult to implement.

Look, I'm not saying that you HAVE to do it. I'm not saying that you'd have to do it all the time. I'm not asking you to do anything at all. I'm just saying that it's not hard to do without resorting to "illogic".

Why does figuring out a way of making a player ability work fall upon anyone but the player?

Because it's a game. And one where one person has a LOT more control over how it pans out than the other players do. I know you think that all players are entitled whiners and all DMs have to desperately cling to all vestiges of power (lest they lose an inch), but I find it a breezy back-and-forth with both sides making easy (and fun!) compromises to work together.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes. That is my point, too.


That's an oversimplification of working within the parameters of the fiction to find a way to make it work, using story, and back-and-forth with the player both in and out of character. Again, my point, which differs from Hriston's, would be to do it only IF it comes up naturally. IE if the player cares enough to try to make it work.


Sure. But there's about a billion other ways to do it than to have the NPCs simply recognize the PC from the future as a folk hero. I can't even begin to describe all the ways because it would depend on the PC, the NPC in question, the town, the scenario, the story, all of which would change game-to-game, but I wouldn't have any trouble coming up with something that works with the whole thing holistically. I wouldn't wind up with something illogical - this is my point. You think that a DM who allows it is less logical-minded than you. That's simply not true.


I mean, that sounds like they'd have reverse backgrounds? It depends on the NPCs they run into, the situation they're in, and ultimately if their damn background ever comes up.


Yeah, I was running Decent into Avernus one of the rare times any of my players ever tried to use their background feature. They had a criminal background. I'm gonna make a long story short here (but trust me that there's a lot more details than this sounds) but they fairly quickly made a contact in the local underground. This opened a lot of problems for both the player and the party, because it's not like it was a 100% beneficial relationship (and the underground had its own agenda that didn't always jive with the party's). At any rate, it added a lot to the game and wasn't at all difficult to implement.

Look, I'm not saying that you HAVE to do it. I'm not saying that you'd have to do it all the time. I'm not asking you to do anything at all. I'm just saying that it's not hard to do without resorting to "illogic".



Because it's a game. And one where one person has a LOT more control over how it pans out than the other players do. I know you think that all players are entitled whiners and all DMs have to desperately cling to all vestiges of power (lest they lose an inch), but I find it a breezy back-and-forth with both sides making easy (and fun!) compromises to work together.

Even granting everything, I fail to see how the revised Backgrounds don't do a better job serving a broader array of styles in play: hence why they have evolved that direction product by product over a decade of feedback (this is not a sudden or harring change, if we even see it as a change at all).

Certainly thr original assertion of Backgrounds being removed from the game is simply bizarre.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't want to get into arguing semantics and there is a reason why I described it as a "pet peeve" - which is to say, yes it annoys me, but I don't think my personal feelings about it matter much in the big scheme of things.

Oh, I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I might have thought it was stronger than that. I disagreed entirely, but not with any passion.

That said, I see a "story-telling" version of D&D as something where the campaign is a context in which the players get to play out the story they imagine for their characters (individually or collectively) and there is an expectation (assuming you don't die) that this will be fulfilled, whereas I see (and prefer) D&D where the the only stories that are "told" are those that happened before the campaign began (if backstory is a big part of your game - it is not so much in mine, save as something for the DM to mine for hooks/events) and those we tell after the game is done (or parts thereof of are done) resulting from the PCs reacting to and acting upon the world. I eschew the sense of "narrative arc" or "story beats" when I run a game, though because of the way the human mind frames things, events can seem to nevertheless follow those frameworks in retrospect. For me, some of the most fun parts of D&D is when the events of the game play out in ways that would probably never happen in a book or movie.

All of that I agree with, as I suspected I would.

Ultimately, however, if I think about it, my issue is not with people using D&D to play a storytelling approach (people should play however is fun to them and I think that something that rarely gets mentioned on these boards is that the same person can actually find more than one style/approach fun) it is the common claim that D&D is "at its essence" a storytelling game. I get that many people are using the term "storytelling game" more loosely than I am willing to - but terms matter to me when describing a play experience.

I think you have what my point was here - while I think you are right about what kind of game the label "storytelling game" really belong to, I doubt that's how most people mean it when they describe D&D that way. I tend to try to understand how the speaker means the term, rather than wishing that they would use the term the way I'd prefer it. If that makes sense.

You are right that in D&D, we generally don't "tell" stories, we "create" them!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Quite often the background features as written could work in some campaigns at the very beginning when the PCs are just I don't typically use the background features as written, at least not for the duration of the campaign. If nothing else, the reputation you received or people you knew before you were an adventurer (oftentimes just a teenager) are minimal compared to the deeds and actions you've taken as the campaign progresses. If background is important part of the character (it rarely is) then I want it to have impact. It's just not going to be the overly simplified canned background feature.

We may disagree on some things, but I agree with everything you write here.