D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

[bloodtide]

You do realize that that was the way things were done...back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, right? That's not "political correctness". That's literally conservative censorship rules. The Hayes Code and the Comics Code Authority were enforcing stuff like this. Rod Serling had to dodge the censorship board by making Twilight Zone a sci-fi show.

"Political correctness" has nothing to do with that.

Odd, it looks like political correctness......

So, for me, much of the best fantasy is chiaroscuro fantasy: a world full of bright and beautiful things....but also full of genuine, deep darkness. Darkness that absolutely can win--can snuff out the light--but which is not guaranteed to win. The world is full of good things worth saving and bad things worth resisting...and human-like creatures aren't inherently on either "team".

Sounds Great!

I don't really see the relevance of the example? My point was that historical accuracy is a commonly-discussed goal, but all too often it is sacrificed, on the regular, for things that look or feel "historical" when they demonstrably are not. Hence, if we are already--guaranteed--getting something that is adulterated, often pretty heavily, with totally ahistorical frippery solely for the purpose of making it "look right", why is it a problem to include other ahistorical things that aren't frippery, but are being done consciously and overtly in order to

Well, sure a lot of people want history to look only one way: their way. Most content creators would never want to do real history.

That's...why should I do that when you're the one who asserted there was a list? A list that, very specifically, WotC is currently using to shut down voices you think shouldn't be?

You could always ask WotC for the list.

If you're going to tell me there's a list, you cannot follow that up with "I'm sure you can find a list yourself." That's not how discussion works. If you tell me there's a list, and you won't tell me what's on it, I'm not going to take that list very seriously!

Sorry, I did not know your rules of discussion. You should post them....

Can you point me to an example of this from WotC's adventures? I get what you're saying, but, I'm really struggling to think of a single example here. Or, are you simply saying that D&D leans into the idea that the adventurers are actually good people? I mean, that's been pretty basic to D&D since virtually day 1. Dragonlance is all about that and that's about as early in the history of the hobby as anything.

It is very standard.....the PCs are heroes and must do a good deed vs the evil monsters.

This view has come under criticism. I wonder how people feel about the same approach to dungeon mapping? E.g., the GM does not provide a map, and if the players don't take notes and get lost, that's on them. That seems more accepted to me, but I'm not sure if there is a core difference between the GM not giving their players a map and not reminding their players of all the in world details.

Maybe just scope? The dungeon is limited, the world is complicated.

I do it with Mapping too. Though, most of the time PCs can get or find a map in-game if they put effort into it.

I get that many things are complicated for some people in my game, but then they can just go play some less complicated game.

Aka "I have a bunch of examples, but I'm afraid giving them would reveal my biases, so I'll just allude to them and let you try to figure out what they are." Provide examples or we can assume the answer is "none, except for the ones I made up in my head."

Only if it was this simple.

If a player was goofing around on their phone for two hours rather than being actively engaged with your game it sounds like your game was boring.

The typical such player would say anything except combat is boring, so I don't really agree.

I'm not talking about rules, I'm talking about the lore, the tl;dr part the players skip. The player who read just the PHB now has supplemental reading: where do elves fit into Krynn, who is Paladine, what is the nature of priests on Krynn. It's even worse if you roll up that elf cleric of Corellon and find out your DM is running Dark Sun: no Gods, clerics worship elements, and elves are desert raiders. Nothing in the PHB prepared you for that, even if the mechanics of elf and cleric are functionally the same.

This is true for a lot of players. The type I avoid playing with, and that have not so great times in my game. To many players just want to do whatever they want on a whim, and that just does not work in a game with a setting or a plot or a story. But sure some DMs just like to sit back, let the player do random stuff and then say "wow".

Though it is funny how a player will write a five page backstory and demand the DM both read it and use it in the game. But if the DM gives the player a handout, oh the player is "too busy" to read it and just wants the DM to tell them stuff.

 

[Scribe]

Do they?

I started playing D&D in the 90's and even in that paleothilic era, my intro to fantasy was Final Fantasy, not Lord of the Rings. I knew more about moogles than hobbits. And when I did start playing D&D, it was through BECMI where there was exactly one type of elf.

A player today might know what an "elf" is in the general concept of fantasy, but I suspect they don't know what a sun elf, or a areneal elf, or a qualensti elf are and what the difference between them are. And the game doesn't do anything to help them. Look at the first paragraphs from 2024:



A simple and succent little origin story. That is contradicted by Eberron (where elves were slaves of the giants), Krynn (where elves were made by a different god) and Athas. Not to mention Ravnica (which uses MTGs origin for elves). And I guess its true for Ravenloft, Planescape and Spelljammer (due to their multiverse elements) but so are all the other origins. And when D&D has attempted to lay down common lore (like the First World) setting purists balk how Bahamut cannot be the same on Oerth, Faerun, and Exandria, let alone be Paladine too (while also being a constellation in Eberron).

And as steeped as I am in D&D lore, I still needed a wiki to type all that out. I can't imagine most players would even give a flying fig to get that deep in the weeds!

So yeah, Bob the new D&D player might know what an "elf" is, but his version of elf is probably not going to align with what the version of elf your campaign is running. And that mis-match of expectation is where these "Bob created a huge backstory that doesn't take into consideration my world" problems come from. Well no kidding, D&D barely gives him anything to base it on and then proceeds to produce a half-dozen exceptions to the scant lore there is!

Which brings us back to settings needing to be fully developed and bought in to.

I'd also say Bob's mistake is in creating some huge backstory, but thats for another thread.

 

[Remathilis]

Which brings us back to settings needing to be fully developed and bought in to.

And I'm saying D&D's problem is having too many settings to be able to buy into. D&D needs one maybe two, fully developed settings, not 12 official and countless homebrew and 3pp.

I'd also say Bob's mistake is in creating some huge backstory, but thats for another thread.

The opposite effect though is the generic PC so divorced from the setting that he could walk through a portal from Faerun to Oerth and nothing about him would change.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And I'm saying D&D's problem is having too many settings to be able to buy into

No, it’s its strength. D&D is a generic fantasy roleplaying ruleset not tied to any specific setting, and built on the principle that every table is unique. Homebrew was the default from the start.

 

[Marc17]

And I'm saying D&D's problem is having too many settings to be able to buy into. D&D needs one maybe two, fully developed settings, not 12 official and countless homebrew and 3pp.

Completely disagree. For a new game (according to the game developers I know), things like character classes (or archetypes) and the setting are the things that gets buy in by buyers and new players. For D&D, limit it to such a bland, creativeless future and I think people will just wander away as they have done before and it will lose players. There are a lot of world builders out there. Also, lots of people with favorite setting that is a published one for D&D, and they never seem to agree on which one that is.

 

[Zeromaru X]

The biggest problem was she was a deity who was far more popular than the setting she was created for, and she couldn't fill her role as a death goddess when every D&D setting already has a bespoke death god or goddess. So they tried to make her a planar entity and the rest was history.

And 5 Doritos later, they released Exandria, that made her the default goddess of death, with a lore more faithful to her original... So, like, I don't think making her a planar being was necessary at all. If that was even the reason for the change (that I really doubt)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Completely disagree. For a new game (according to the game developers I know), things like character classes (or archetypes) and the setting are the things that gets buy in by buyers and new players. For D&D, limit it to such a bland, creativeless future and I think people will just wander away as they have done before and it will lose players. There are a lot of world builders out there. Also, lots of people with favorite setting that is a published one for D&D, and they never seem to agree on which one that is.

And this gets me into the distinction between settings meant to be read vs settings meant to be played. I think the only game without a setting that has a chance to get big is Daggerheart because it's settings that spark the imagination - but find that too much setting material has a negative impact on games.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And 5 Doritos later, they released Exandria, that made her the default goddess of death, with a lore more faithful to her original... So, like, I don't think making her a planar being was necessary at all. If that was even the reason for the change (that I really doubt)

Exandria has always used the Dawn War cosmology right from the very earliest days of Critical Role (although there are some interlopers sometimes). I think from memory the Raven Queen predates 4e by technicalities but she was popularised through the Nentir Vale which used the Dawn War pantheon.

 

[Remathilis]

No, it’s its strength. D&D is a generic fantasy roleplaying ruleset not tied to any specific setting, and built on the principle that every table is unique. Homebrew was the default from the start.

The strength of not having an identity is that everyone paints there own identity on it. Every DM doing things differently means there is no sense of overarching continuity. You can't just tell me "make a character" and direct me to the PHB and expect me create a full fleshed-out, well integrated character like you can in Pathfinder or most other RPGs. At the very least, I'm going to given additional homework, ranging from house documents to wikis to whole $60 setting books just to make a well-rounded elf character. That's the downside to D&D's strength: the DM may pick whatever lore they want, but the player's do too.

 

[Remathilis]

And 5 Doritos later, they released Exandria, that made her the default goddess of death, with a lore more faithful to her original... So, like, I don't think making her a planar being was necessary at all. If that was even the reason for the change (that I really doubt)

CR used the 4e default deities (plus a Pathfinder one). If anything, Critical Role is the only place the original RQ is left and its status as being owned by CR/Darrington means its status in the multiverse is wholly dependent on the continued colab between the two companies. But for settings WotC completely owns, she doesn't have a proper place until Nerath makes a comback.