D&D 5E Are humanoid mono-cultures being replaced with the Rule of Three?

[Kobold Avenger]

I blame World of Warcraft. I tend to make the dwarves German.

Some of the blame about Dwarven accents, might be on John Rhys-Davies...

 

[Reynard]

I agree that all threads of a campaign should be discussed with players before you start the game, with the understanding that some things may come up via play that require further discussion. However, the PCs know the story they're in, and we don't need to pause the game to ask permission for things that are obvious implications of their actions.

To address your mass murder example: If the PCs get in an argument in a tavern and then proceed to kill their 6 foes with 13 bystanders killed in a fireball thr PC wizard launches, I disagree with the notion that a DM should - by default - not address that situation in the story. I also disagree that the DM should stop the game to ask the players if he can address it. There should be a story response to the situation if this is to be a role playing game where players run characters in a story - because if there isn't, there is no story. If there is no story, the PCs are not characters in a story, and if they are not running characters in a story, it is not a role playing game - just a strategy game likeDescent or Gloomhaven.

That isn't what i was talking about. I was talking about the upthread example of the PCs being tricked into thinking they were just killing some orcs on the road, only to discover that they had murdered a bunch of desperate individuals when the PCs discover their starving women and children. The idea that stuff like that will come up in play absolutely needs to be addressed in Session 0.

I also vehemently disagree that addressing the "real world" concerns via D&D is wrong. D&D is a role playing game. Characters play roles in stories, and those stories can take any form the group wishes to tackle. Explorations of real world morality are a backbone of fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy. Morality has been at the heart of most of the great D&D games I've played.

I was referring to the attempt at discussing whether in our real world there was such a thing as victory over evil by good, and saying that this message board is probably not the place for that discussion.

 

[Steampunkette]

The irony in this thread of people dividing orcs up by color to designate which ones can be safely slaughtered is both delicious ad hilarious.

... that... that's not what that -means-, though...

In Forgotten Realms you've got the Green Orcs of the West (who came through magic portals to Toril from another world) and you've got the Grey Orcs of the East (who came through different magical portals).

Green Orcs have a Warrior culture, while Grey Orcs have a more Shamanistic culture. They're still Orcs that largely worship Gruumsh and the Orcish Pantheon and have good and evil members in both cultures... they're just different cultures.

 

[Mercurius]

I fault no one for not wanting something changed. People have their own beliefs and their own ways of doing things, and that's fine. But at some point after a book has been written and published, (general) you gotta just accept that what you want isn't what is happening. And thus all of these diggings in of your heels thinking that if (general) you just argue good enough... WotC'll change their mind and rip the pages out of the book they've just written. But that is in fact accomplishing nothing but making yourself miserable.

And that's when the rest of us always chime in with "If you don't want it as it is written in the book, then for your own sake change it in your own game."

We don't say that to anger you. We don't say that to thumb our noses at you. We say it because we know that is the only way you are actually going to get what you want and possibly be happy. The change has been made to the game at large and it's not going back... so save yourself the grief by just accepting it and moving on with your own game in whatever way you wish your own game to play.

Have you been "left behind" by the game in this instance? Yup. But people have been left behind by the changes in D&D for almost 50 years. You aren't the first, you certainly aren't the last... but if you really want to play D&D that badly, you gotta learn to accept it and make the D&D you want to play at your table (even if it's not the one that is baseline for everyone else).

LOL, who are you talking to? I have advocated for, again and again, "make the game what you will, regardless of what is written in the books." I have embraced each edition as it came out going back to 1E, and altered it to my desires. I pick and choose what I want to use, and don't get ruffled by stuff I don't like. I have suggested that people do the same because, frankly, it is rather liberating and helps one avoid the morass of continually being frustrated about how the latest edition or change doesn't suit their fancy. This applies both to those who want only traditional stuff and those who want only new stuff, or anything outside of what is in the books.

So I don't know who this "you" is that you are talking to in the above.

Things tend to oscillate, also. Changes occur, but not always in one direction. Sometimes they course correct, or swing back the other way. It is more dialectic than linear. Changes aren't always for the best, also. What I take issue is that any disagreement with certain changes is interpreted as regressive or holding onto the past. I think that is a common misconception among those who advocate that WotC take a certain direction.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You know, except for the major MCU movie from a few years ago. This is still relevant and widely engaging storytelling.

The light from the MCU's Civil War will take 1 billion years to reach the feeble illumination from the dumpster fire that is the original Civil War arc with Miriam Sharpe, Captain America getting called out for not watching NASCAR, Clor, killing Black Goliath and burying him in a tarp, the Negative Zone gulag, the SHRA in general, Bleedball, the real villain, Nitro being dealt with in a tie-in, basically everything except Deadpool's tie-in.

And it all started with the pizza-cutter (all edge, no point) action of explodifying a bunch of kids to show 'HERO BAD'.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Orcs aren't the biggest offender for D&D's tendency to value to color of a critter over the content of its character. Not even drow with their obvious Mark of Hamm deal compare to Dragons - a highly individualistic, hyper-sapient race of super-geniuses who nonetheless have everything about their existence predestined by their color. They're portrayed as not so much different species as different cultures selected by hereditary skin color. Being red makes you a vain jerk with a god complex. Period. Being copper makes you an insufferable chatterbox. Even if a red somehow isn't evil, they're still the worst version of Booster Gold and coppers are incapable of being shy.

Sure, there's at least a stab at xenofictioning them, which isn't done with humanoids, but it's one of the first things that I marked out as 'weird in an unfun way' about D&D.

 

[DammitVictor]

D&D is a long story game. You have time to explore. Dealing with the fallout of your decisions isn't a 'juvenile DM' approach. If handled well, it can be very moving storytelling. I tend to think of young and inexperienced DMs tending towards hack and slash with no story in mind, which would be the opposite of what you attribute to them.

Exploring the implications and ramifications of the PCs' actions isn't the juvenile part-- it's the "bait and switch", setting a single obvious course of action up as the "right thing to do" and then rubbing the players' noses in it later for their failure to... what, exactly? Their failure to refuse to play the game they were offered, by the person who offered them that game?

In a mature game about morality and consequences, the players would know about the starving orc village before they widowed it and there'd have been a hint that solutions other than violence were possible. Even in a game about unforeseen consequences, the heart of the gameplay is about making decisions, knowing that the consequences might be unforeseen-- something that "protect the village from orcs" heavily implies the exact opposite of.

It's really easy to set up a "gotcha" moment as the player that controls all of the information the other players have to act on. It's something DMs should carefully consider before, and during, setting those moments up.

 

[DEFCON 1]

LOL, who are you talking to? I have advocated for, again and again, "make the game what you will, regardless of what is written in the books." I have embraced each edition as it came out going back to 1E, and altered it to my desires. I pick and choose what I want to use, and don't get ruffled by stuff I don't like. I have suggested that people do the same because, frankly, it is rather liberating and helps one avoid the morass of continually being frustrated about how the latest edition or change doesn't suit their fancy. This applies both to those who want only traditional stuff and those who want only new stuff, or anything outside of what is in the books.

So I don't know who this "you" is that you are talking to in the above.

Things tend to oscillate, also. Changes occur, but not always in one direction. Sometimes they course correct, or swing back the other way. It is more dialectic than linear. Changes aren't always for the best, also. What I take issue is that any disagreement with certain changes is interpreted as regressive or holding onto the past. I think that is a common misconception among those who advocate that WotC take a certain direction.

Heh... I tried using "(general) you" to get across that I didn't mean you specifically, @Mercurius ... I meant the general random person out there reading the post. Apparently my attempt at making the distinction didn't work.

 

[Mirtek]

The change has been made to the game at large and it's not going back...

Actually that's not a certainty. It's certainly not going back any time soon, but it may very well go back a couple of years down the line. The same wind of change that brought about this changes can (and often have) changed direction and such things ebb and flow.

Who knows when the new fad might become "going back to basic"

 

[DEFCON 1]

Actually that's not a certainty. It's certainly not going back any time soon, but it may very well go back a couple of years down the line. The same wind of change that brought about this changes can (and often have) changed direction and such things ebb and flow.

Who knows when the new fad might become "going back to basic"

Well, if future editions go back to basics like you say... any posts made on EN World in the here and now aren't going to have impact on them. Any subsequent open playtest of 6E or beyond will take the possibility of any of those changes into account.