D&D 5E A Sense of Wonder in 5E

[Doug McCrae]

You may be interested in these quotes from early D&D regarding sensawunda -

Where has all the magic gone?

I believe they demonstrate just how quickly D&Ders became aware of, and even bored with, new content, even in the pre-Internet era.

 

[Scribble]

I think they need to do away with creature types.

Or maybe work it so they are optional.

For me when I look at say, a monster, sense of wonder is kind of spoiled by monster type... Oh it's Undead so it's immune to X Y and Z, and it has blah blah blah...

It's too scientific and clinical to me.



I guess you need SOME sense of similarity between similar things, but I feel like there must be a better way then typing everything.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sense of wonder has only one hope:

DM stuff is with the DM. Players are forbidden to look into a book other than the PHB.
It was always something mysterious about the DMG and the MM. We just did not know what to expect.

I want it that way in 5e

 

[Sound of Azure]

Sense of wonder has only one hope:

DM stuff is with the DM. Players are forbidden to look into a book other than the PHB.
It was always something mysterious about the DMG and the MM. We just did not know what to expect.

I want it that way in 5e

That's a great solution, unless 3 of your 4 regular players are also DMs. Like my group is.

 

[GreyICE]

Yeah, that makes a really clear distinction between players and DMs, and almost suggests that DMs shouldn't be players, which is what practically no one wants.

I love the idea of keeping DM content in the DMG, and player content in the PHB, instead of locking player content in the DMG on the theory that players aren't DMs.

I would like it if the DMG had an item creation guide that let DMs create unique items easily without unbalancing the game, or worse creating a unique item that sucks hard.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yeah, DMing myself killed a lot of my sense of wonder...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't remember the exact quote or even ages, but G. K. Chesterton has a passage about wonder, where he says something akin to: "A lad of five is astonished that there might be an elf in the garden. At two or three, he is astonished that there is a garden."

Once you get past what is, then wonder becomes more about where or how it is, especially if the familiar is presented in an unfamiliar light. Then you might see it again, in a new way, with a new sense of wonder--as if the aforementioned lad, now 25, saw the same garden through the eyes of his spouse or child.

I recommend an adventure where a rigidly honest beholder tavern keeper hires the party to correct some injustice.

 

[Boarstorm]

I recommend an adventure where a rigidly honest beholder tavern keeper hires the party to correct some injustice.

I tried something similar. The party was so paranoid that the "honest beholder" was going to screw them, they burned the tavern down.

(Equivalent situation, at any rate. Just substitute beholder with "Hutt," and tavern with "moon.")

 

[pemerton]

I don't believe I've ever encountered an edition of D&D that didn't encourage the players to describe what they're doing.

For me it's not about encouraging but about mandating ie can the action resolution rules even be engaged without giving some account of what the PC is doing?

Now this can be a matter of degree. For example, "I look down the corridor. What does my Trapfinding tell me?" If that's the sort of description of action that your mechanics are going to work with, then there better be some pretty interesting stuff going on when corridors are looked down! (The analogue of this in 4e is that, to use a combat power, it is enough to say "I move over there and attack it with Footwork Lure" - this puts a lot of pressure on moving over there being an interesting thing - hence 4e's obsession with terrain, forced movement, triggered actions, etc.)

 

[MichaelSomething]

Wouldn't the easiest solution to be play an RPG you knew nothing about? I heard Spirit of the Century is pretty different from D&D!