D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

@FitzTheRuke @Clint_L

Y’all are kinda stinking up the joint with your interactions. Can we dial back the rhetoric? Perhaps even disengage from each other for a bit?

 

[Faolyn]

From my point of view, the mechanics are there to play out the fiction in a practical and hopefully verisimilitudinous way. It doesn't shape the fiction, it contours to it.

Problem is, everybody's table plays differently--and even at a table, each player may play differently. There's no possible way one mechanic can play out the fiction for everyone.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's the fundamental difference in opinion this disagreement is about. People simply see the relationship of the mechanics and fiction differently. Whether we use mechanics to represent the fiction, or whether we invent fiction to justify the mechanics. I don't think anyone is going to change their position on that, it simply is an different way of thinking things.

I think that the problems in so many of the background feature wordings goes a step further than just mechanics violating fiction. When they violate the fiction, they go on to violate Player/GM roles at the table too by giving players the idea that they can lock the GM out of filling the GM's role while the feature violates the fiction.

 

[James Gasik]

How do you knock a cube on its side?

So first you get a Bigby's Hand, then you flick the top of the cube just so...

 

[Faolyn]

When it comes to oozes, it might be better to decide they are actually a type of slime mold and not a giant amoeba. Slime molds have tops and bottoms, at least when they're fruiting.

 

[Faolyn]

how is that supposed to work…

Player: I use my feature to send a message to my contact
DM: I’d rather you not use it

Or as I've said:

Player: I use my feature to send a message to my contact.

DM: You're a thousand miles away from your home city/on another continent/on a completely different plane of existence. How do you get in contact with them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Problem is, everybody's table plays differently--and even at a table, each player may play differently. There's no possible way one mechanic can play out the fiction for everyone.

But a particular game generally has a point of view on that subject (though they may not clearly state it in the text). 4e, for example, seemed to me to fall on the "mechanics first" side more than other editions if D&D. How a game falls on the spectrum affects the playing of it.

 

[Faolyn]

if the mechanics violate the fiction, then I am not sure it is the fiction that has to give… I guess that is the fundamental difference

It really depends, though, on both what the fiction is and how the mechanics violate it.

 

[mamba]

Or as I've said:

Player: I use my feature to send a message to my contact.

DM: You're a thousand miles away from your home city/on another continent/on a completely different plane of existence. How do you get in contact with them?

I thought that was the one you wanted to avoid

 

[mamba]

It really depends, though, on both what the fiction is and how the mechanics violate it.

yes, which is why I said ‘not sure the fiction has to give’ rather than ‘the mechanics have to give’