D&D 5E cancelled 5e announcement at Gencon??? Anyone know anything about this?

[Umbran]

I merely have the expectations that protagonists will be proactive.

Often, protagonists are reactive. Being heroes means defeating (in some sense) villains, right? Well, you have to wait for the villain to *do* something before you can beat them.

In the real world, a police detective has knowledge and resources and is trained to go digging around to find the bad guys. Maybe in the fictional world, the characters have such as well, but the player usually doesn't, and may not know how to approach the problem of finding bad guys (or whatever interesting things exist to interact with).

 

[Wicht]

Maybe I should say then that I expect the protagonists to be proactively reactive.

 

[Pilgrim]

Often, protagonists are reactive. Being heroes means defeating (in some sense) villains, right? Well, you have to wait for the villain to *do* something before you can beat them.

In the real world, a police detective has knowledge and resources and is trained to go digging around to find the bad guys. Maybe in the fictional world, the characters have such as well, but the player usually doesn't, and may not know how to approach the problem of finding bad guys (or whatever interesting things exist to interact with).

I tend to agree, from the view point of the PCs being "heroes".

As both a player and DM, I personally don't take the mindset that the PCs are "heroes" by default. I always think of the PCs as "adventurers". Heroes might be reactive, but adventurers are proactive. Adventurers can act "heroic" and be recognized as heroes, but they are not heroes just because they are the characters of which the players are in control.

When 4E was designed, it was done so from the stand point that the PCs would be "legendary heroes". I think this makes a big difference when compared to earlier editions, which implied more of an adventurer point of view.

 

[Pentius]

The maiden example was just an example, but its a useful example. There does not need to be a clearly stated conditional time pressure on every mission. But DMs should always act in such a way as to allow their players to know that events happen in the world around them according to a logical, progressive time. I don't fixate on the minutes and hours of the world, but I do focus heavily on the days, beginning most adventures with a mention of the date and, after camping, reinforcing the fact that it is a new day. If you train your players right, they create their own pressure, because they are not sure what the ramifications of delay might be. Who knows how long they actually have until the big bad is summoned, the girl is killed, the treasure is spent, or the dragon summons help. If they go away and leave a situation uncontrolled, they can be fairly sure that things will likely have changed while they are gone as the other side continues to act. Or at least that is always the assumption on their part, even when I, the DM, am going to change up very little.

I guess it boils down to a play style where, while my game may revolve around the PCs, the world never does.

When I say there's not always a time pressure, I don't mean, "No, there totally is one, it just isn't stated up front." I mean that sometimes there really isn't a time pressure. A couple of actual play examples I've seen over the years may help illustrate this.

The PCs, being adventure hungry new guys in town, ask around about possible places of interest. They are told of the ruins of a monastery near town, where a valuable jewel may still rest, after all these years, but the townspeople are afraid to go near the ruins(Yes, this was AD&D1e. Yes we started the campaign copying the books' example of play. It was our first game). Giant spiders, ghouls, traps, that place was dangerous. Luckily, there was also nothing stopping us from leaving if it got too hot. The treasure wasn't going anywhere. The townspeople were afraid of the place, and we were the only adventurers in town.


Example two, a botched funeral ritual accidentally desecrates a graveyard, and the dead begin to rise. Our heroes, being do-gooder type chaps, decide to help. We clear the dead from above ground, and find that there are many more in the crypts, so we start to clear them. Spells/hp/etc run low, so we pull out, board the entrance, and set a watch while we patch up. The only undead there were corporeal, and there was only one entrance.


Now, in either of these cases, the Dm certainly could have created a pressure, ad-hoc, by adding in another group of adventurers after the jewel, for instance, or another exit to the crypts we didn't know about. Were I DMing(or rather, were the me of today DMing, example one was actually me DMing, so many years ago) I probably would have added just such an element, to keep the players on their toes. But does that not go against your stated idea of the world not revolving around the PCs?

 

[Wicht]

I said the story does revolve around the PCs. But not the world. Its a subtle distinction. The adventure above is good for a starting point, but at some point there needs to be, I think, a bit more conflict, besides monsters waiting to be killed, in order to create excitement.

 

[Pentius]

I said the story does revolve around the PCs. But not the world. Its a subtle distinction. The adventure above is good for a starting point, but at some point there needs to be, I think, a bit more conflict, besides monsters waiting to be killed, in order to create excitement.

And I don't disagree, but it simply isn't a reality that every group, every campaign, will always have such. Sometimes an adventure has a poor kicker. Sometimes there is a lull between adventures. Sometimes, time does matter, but just not strictly enough to curtail a caster. My point is, pacing is an art, and not every DM is good at it, or even aware of the need to try, or the consequences of poor pacing.

 

[IronWolf]

And I don't disagree, but it simply isn't a reality that every group, every campaign, will always have such.

Quite true. But this could be a portion of the puzzle as to why some groups see wizards as an all powerful, all the time time force causing balance issues and others haven't really run into this to a large degree.

Sometimes there is a lull between adventures. Sometimes, time does matter, but just not strictly enough to curtail a caster. My point is, pacing is an art, and not every DM is good at it, or even aware of the need to try, or the consequences of poor pacing.

In campaigns where the world lives and breathes whether the characters are acting or not it becomes harder for the party to tell when things are time sensitive or not. You are right, sometimes time doesn't matter. But other times it does. This mix often leads parties to consider time in their decisions to press on or not.

 

[Umbran]

Heroes might be reactive, but adventurers are proactive.

Are they, really? Aren't they usually of the form, "Hey, I heard about this dungeon off to the southwest, let's go kill some things and take their stuff!" ? That's still a reaction to hearing the story.

A proactive character gets *ahead* of the stories of possible adventure, and creates new ones. Reactive characters find trouble, proactive characters make their own trouble. A reactive character hears that the King is evil, and sets off to do something about it. A proactive character decides that being King would be cool, and sets off to become one.

Most characters are reactive, because while the character lives in the world, the player does not. The player has blessedly small amounts of information about what's going on, so they usually depend on the GM to hand them a hook they may react to. They cannot create a dungeon, and must react to them when they are presented.

 

[Pilgrim]

Are they, really? Aren't they usually of the form, "Hey, I heard about this dungeon off to the southwest, let's go kill some things and take their stuff!" ? That's still a reaction to hearing the story.

A proactive character gets *ahead* of the stories of possible adventure, and creates new ones. Reactive characters find trouble, proactive characters make their own trouble. A reactive character hears that the King is evil, and sets off to do something about it. A proactive character decides that being King would be cool, and sets off to become one.

Most characters are reactive, because while the character lives in the world, the player does not. The player has blessedly small amounts of information about what's going on, so they usually depend on the GM to hand them a hook they may react to. They cannot create a dungeon, and must react to them when they are presented.

That's precisely my point. A "hero" can't be proactive, committing a heroic act is reactive to something that has occurred.

An "adventurer" can decide they want to set off to become King of a country and seek to accomplish that task. It might be an adventurous ordeal, but may not be particularly heroic. Adventurers could become heroes depending on the choices they make through out their adventures, but just being an adventurer does not make one a hero by default.

 

[Lanefan]

... it very well be how I keep track of INGAME time. I track searches and hall explorations. I am a nut with it, from reading in the 1st edition D&D DMG, you cannot have a meaningful campaign without accurate timekeeping. I may have taken it too far.

I don't think there's such a thing as taking this too far. Good on ya!

Of course, the 15-minute adventuring day can have other meanings too: in my previous campaign the first thing the party did one day resulted in a near-TPK; the game log reads "By 9:30 a.m., S'nel'be* is all that's left of the party." Best 15-minute day ever!

* - realizing there would be no survivors, this character grabbed whatever valuables he could carry and teleported out. He later traded said valuables for a wish to undo what happened...

Lanefan