D&D (2024) Did you make up your mind about 5.24?

[Micah Sweet]

It's not preprogramming. The players can do anything and the DM adjudicates it. He can though have a sandbox, with lots of prepared random encounters that add to the story of the sandbox. He can have a variety of adventures and subplots going on in the world. If you have a rich sandbox, with a lot of backstory for the people who live there, it is easy to handle players going off in some random direction. Now if they show up and tell me right off they are sailing for some faraway country totally unexpectedly, then I'd probably just say "I will see you next week as I have nothing for that at the moment".

We are I believe supposed to ignore sandbox play now, since 5.5 doesn't provide any support for it. Please phrase all your comments on D&D in the form of an adventure path.

 

[GnomeWorks]

A cash grab with more page count, more art, and $50 MSRP?

Which is the more effective mouse trap -- with cheese, or without?

If you play D&D regularly and don't at least know who Matt Mercer is, that's mostly just showing you actively disengage from knowledge of the intersection of D&D and pop culture.

Refusing to engage with modern "pop culture" is a mark of a sensible mind, in today's world.

If a prospective player brings up Critical Role (or whatever it's called), that's going to make me significantly less likely to invite them to my table.

 

[abirdcall]

I read tons of insightful ideas on this forum, but every now and then one is like a lightbulb going off, and I feel like I really get something that I had never fully appreciated. This is one such comment.

The way D&D typically handles multiple deities is really odd. It's kind of polytheistic, in that there are tons of different gods and no one really denies that they exist. But it is treated more like competing churches in, say, Wisconsin, where each person is exclusive to one particular faith. That's not how polytheistic religions typically work; usually folks in a polytheistic society follow all the available gods, focusing on the ones that are particularly relevant to their lives at that moment. Even the holy people, though perhaps aligned with a particular deity aren't necessarily in an exclusive relationship, so to speak.

I've been running polytheism more like competing monotheisms. I'm going to change that.

I'm not sure I got that idea from what I've consumed.

I've usually seen commoners depicted as making offerings and prayers to whatever deity represents the thing they're going to do.

Clerics on the other hand, yeah. But then they still don't fight with other deities who share the same ideals and are in complementary parts of the pantheon.

I suppose though that whenever religion is centred it is often a conflict involving over zealous people trying to gain power.

I suppose the other thing too, and maybe most important, is that a deity's power is proportional to how much they are venerated.

 

[Emerikol]

Not to mention an animated show on Amazon Prime now entering its fourth season.

If you play D&D regularly and don't at least know who Matt Mercer is, that's mostly just showing you actively disengage from knowledge of the intersection of D&D and pop culture.

I didn't watch the cartoon either. Watching people play D&D isn't my thing. I'm not against it and maybe if I wanted to learn a new game it would be worth a watch. My time is more precious at the moment due to non-game related duties so there is that too.

 

[abirdcall]

Which is the more effective mouse trap -- with cheese, or without?



Refusing to engage with modern "pop culture" is a mark of a sensible mind, in today's world.

If a prospective player brings up Critical Role (or whatever it's called), that's going to make me significantly less likely to invite them to my table.

The books are out to harm us now?

 

[Emerikol]

I read tons of insightful ideas on this forum, but every now and then one is like a lightbulb going off, and I feel like I really get something that I had never fully appreciated. This is one such comment.

The way D&D typically handles multiple deities is really odd. It's kind of polytheistic, in that there are tons of different gods and no one really denies that they exist. But it is treated more like competing churches in, say, Wisconsin, where each person is exclusive to one particular faith. That's not how polytheistic religions typically work; usually folks in a polytheistic society follow all the available gods, focusing on the ones that are particularly relevant to their lives at that moment. Even the holy people, though perhaps aligned with a particular deity aren't necessarily in an exclusive relationship, so to speak.

I've been running polytheism more like competing monotheisms. I'm going to change that.

It hurts my soul to agree with NeonChameleon but I have ran a lot of campaigns with pantheons vs individual gods. Clerics still favor one deity but they are welcome and considered priests of the pantheon. Unlike say ancient Rome or Greece, I don't have as wide a spread of alignments in a pantheon.

edit:
My Neon comment is meant as humor if anyone is humor challenged who is reading.

 

[Emerikol]

We are I believe supposed to ignore sandbox play now, since 5.5 doesn't provide any support for it. Please phrase all your comments on D&D in the form of an adventure path.

I think I need to write a book for DMs that teaches them the old ways of running games and how to adapt various versions of D&D to that approach.

 

[Tonguez]

Its meh, a few tweaks made, some great, a few dumb, not worth buying new books though.

 

[TwoSix]

I didn't watch the cartoon either. Watching people play D&D isn't my thing. I'm not against it and maybe if I wanted to learn a new game it would be worth a watch. My time is more precious at the moment due to non-game related duties so there is that too.

I don't watch it either. But that certainly doesn't preclude me from knowing what it is and the basic facts about it.

 

[TwoSix]

It isn't that hard to add flavor to an encounter but it's hard to be convincing making it up completely.

Convincing of what?

I mean, I probably can't convince you my improvised encounter was actually pre-planned, but that's a bit of a tautology.

But I definitely can convince you it's a hard, challenging fight, even if I make it up on the spot.