D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Oofta]

I too have had - and still have - long-lasting 1e characters but every one of them has died more than once and most of them have lost a level or two at some point. One of them has also been aged twice, once by a ghost and once by something I forget now; his age has gone up and down like a yo-yo through his career.

It ain't snakes and ladders when there's no snakes on the board.

"After facing that [level-drainer] you're just not the [insert class name here] you used to be" doesn't make narrative sense?

How about sudden aging, such as that which happens when you get on the wrong side of a 1e ghost. In a system where age category directly affects one's stats (which IMO is a good and realistic mechanic), sudden massive aging can really wreck your day, and it's straight out of real-world folklore.

I'm pretty sure 5e (and 4e?) don't have aging as an effect any more.

Ghosts can still age people in 5E. But it's always been an issue. A dwarf is hardly bothered by aging a few decades, it matters even less an elf. But a human, much less a half orc? Yeah, they're SOL.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Didn't the 3e aging effects make it so your senses and cognitive facilities invariably improve as you reached your relative hundreds while your physical ability invariably degraded despite you being presumably an active badass who gets plenty of exercise, eats better than most people in the world and has better healthcare than most modern people?

Once again, Jack Lalane debunks Dungeons and Dragons.

Edit: Oh, and also theoretically there are people in such worlds who just straight become paralyzed on their 70'th birthday due to their DEX or STR hitting 0 from a starting 6 regardless of actual infirmity.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I would consider "level drain" as it is classically implemented to be extremely un-fun and will unequivocally refuse to play in a system that uses it. If the next time I'm DMing for my playgroup, they want me to run an OSR game (I have offered to run Dolmenwood), I will probably propose an alternative mechanic.

I'm not opposed to long-lasting changes for a character, but I have no patience for the busywork involved in determining the effects of losing levels - indeed, as a practical matter I detest even the 5e approach to undead energy drain of reducing a character's hit point maximum. I'd much rather use exhaustion.

All that is to say that it can both be true that your player had a great time playing in a game where level drain is "a thing" and that the same mechanic would be a hard no-sell for a vast majority of D&D players.

Level drain as exhaustion. That's actually an intriguing idea!

 

[Clint_L]

I too have had - and still have - long-lasting 1e characters but every one of them has died more than once and most of them have lost a level or two at some point. One of them has also been aged twice, once by a ghost and once by something I forget now; his age has gone up and down like a yo-yo through his career.

It ain't snakes and ladders when there's no snakes on the board.

"After facing that [level-drainer] you're just not the [insert class name here] you used to be" doesn't make narrative sense?

No, it doesn't. Not to me. It's a game-ist penalty. You've suddenly lost the ability to do an entire ability, forgotten that feat that you'd perfected, and so on. Maybe if it was combined with total amnesia of everything that had happened in that time, but even then it's weird. I hate it now and I always have. It doesn't make sense and we always found it un-fun, even back in the 80s, and avoided it - it just makes you redo the stuff you already did to get back to the same place. If it works for you and your group, that's awesome, but I think there is a reason it is all but absent from the past few decades of RPGs.

How about sudden aging, such as that which happens when you get on the wrong side of a 1e ghost. In a system where age category directly affects one's stats (which IMO is a good and realistic mechanic), sudden massive aging can really wreck your day, and it's straight out of real-world folklore.

I'm pretty sure 5e (and 4e?) don't have aging as an effect any more.

They do, but just as in 1e it's a very inconsistent effect that mostly doesn't do much. It can be narratively fun, though - one character in my current campaign has had her whole arc built around magically-induced aging.

 

[clearstream]

So I just don’t see this idea of “it’s the DM’s campaign” as necessary. I certainly don’t think of a DM who compromises with or considers his players as “not being worthwhile.”

While I very much agree with you here, this is resisting something I did not say.

I’m not looking at it as some kind of legal contract. If I’m playing with friends, which is like 99% of my gaming, then I’m going to consider and respect what they want from play.

This thought came out of a previous conversation, and relates to something I've observed can be fruitful for play. Some groups seem to follow a pattern where they all agree that the DM owns "the campaign".

A case where I've observed that was a long running DQ campaign where a group of DMs were curators of the world and rules. Everyone playing agreed to that. The DM group was fluid - anyone could join and thus become a curator too - but they had to take on the mantle first. Anyone could make submissions to the curators, who could accept or reject.

Another case was a long running AD&D campaign where a single DM was curator of world and rules. They seemed - again with agreement - to treat "the campaign" as their property. That didn't necessarily mean they weren't considering and respecting what their players wanted from play, but ultimately they decided on world and rules. In this context (AD&D) it's interesting to recall the afterword in the DMG

It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters given in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons volumes, you are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a whole first, your campaign next, and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as it was meant to be. May you find as much pleasure in so doing as the rest of us do!​

The argument I am making is one about the kinds of entities involved in TTRPG play and how they are wielded for play. I'm observing "the campaign" as a metagame entity, i.e. one that exists across sessions, and it is possible and can even be fruitful for some modes of play for DMs to own it. It seems feasibly like an intellectual property: the creating artist (in this case the DM) holds rights over "the campaign" including a right not to have it adapted without their approval.

I'm not making any argument for the superiority (or inferiority) of this approach. I'm calling attention to the entity itself - "the campaign" - and asserting its existence in the domain and that there are groups that agree to it being owned by the DM. I'm curious about what they get out of it and whether those precise benefits can be gained in other ways?

 

[Lanefan]

Ghosts can still age people in 5E. But it's always been an issue. A dwarf is hardly bothered by aging a few decades, it matters even less an elf. But a human, much less a half orc? Yeah, they're SOL.

True; to be fair to all the amount of aging needs to be based on the victim's expected lifespan rather than a fixed number of years. I keep forgetting this as we houseruled it to work like that ages ago.

 

[Lanefan]

No, it doesn't. Not to me. It's a game-ist penalty. You've suddenly lost the ability to do an entire ability, forgotten that feat that you'd perfected, and so on. Maybe if it was combined with total amnesia of everything that had happened in that time, but even then it's weird. I hate it now and I always have. It doesn't make sense and we always found it un-fun, even back in the 80s, and avoided it - it just makes you redo the stuff you already did to get back to the same place.

Or, at considerable cost, get a Restoration.

To me it's much the same narrative as losing a bunch of your expensive items you worked so hard to acquire/afford. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

 

[clearstream]

I didn't even know that site was even still active. Then @clearstream provided a link to the new players guide above and I can't figure out how access that page except through the link provided.

I navigated there from DnDBeyond. T'was a winding path...

In any case, I don't think the definition of rule 0 really applies to anything other than this intro module. It's not really designed to replace the core rulebooks after all, it's just a simplified version of the game as an introduction into what D&D is like.

I agree with you that this "Rule 0" is evidently not part of core. The House Rules wording in the 2024 DMG implies that DM proposes rules changes, but ought not to impose them if their players do not like them.

As things stand, I feel like they'd have done better making the Pinebrook Rule 0 their template for the 2024 DMG House Rules. The resultant norming would have semed to me more fruitful.

 

[pemerton]

The argument I am making is one about the kinds of entities involved in TTRPG play and how they are wielded for play. I'm observing "the campaign" as a metagame entity, i.e. one that exists across sessions, and it is possible and can even be fruitful for some modes of play for DMs to own it. It seems feasibly like an intellectual property: the creating artist (in this case the DM) holds rights over "the campaign" including a right not to have it adapted without their approval.

I'm not making any argument for the superiority (or inferiority) of this approach. I'm calling attention to the entity itself - "the campaign" - and asserting its existence in the domain and that there are groups that agree to it being owned by the DM.

I'm a bit doubtful that the entity you are positing exists. There can be no general inference from the use of a referring term to the existence of a thing - eg the word "nothing" doesn't refer to anything.

As opposed to a "metagame entity", I think what you are describing is a particular type of network of relationships between game participants, with the GM occupying a key "nexus" role in that network.

 

[pemerton]

True; to be fair to all the amount of aging needs to be based on the victim's expected lifespan rather than a fixed number of years. I keep forgetting this as we houseruled it to work like that ages ago.

But this doesn't seem to make sense - why would a supernatural effect make an Elf age more than a Halfling more than a human?