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

[Micah Sweet]

It's hard to divine the intent of Backgrounds. If they were meant to be temporary, and useless after Tier 1, it would have been nice if the book said as much, instead of the DMG asking the DM to work with the players to make them important to the game.

The book studiously avoids taking a stand on a variety of issues. It's actually very annoying.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well let me put it to you this way. I'm pretty sure after the big battle, I will lack the physical or mental endurance to run a few minor encounters. Better to have a big climax to the adventure and get to the denouement at that point!

I don't like to define narrative tropes in my D&D game until after the adventure personally. The story to me is defined after all is said and done, not while it's happening.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think they're meant to be as "useful as you(r table) can find use in them". As vague as that is, I think it was intentional that different tables would use them to different extents. It seems that they have now learned that it was a step of vagueness too far, and that most tables just don't bother using them in order to avoid the sorts of conflicts we see here. So they've been scrapped. It's unfortunate for the small group of tables that liked them, but it is what it is.

Fortunately there's absolutely nothing stopping those tables from using the current background mechanics in their games.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't like to define narrative tropes in my D&D game until after the adventure personally. The story to me is defined after all is said and done, not while it's happening.

I don't foresee any problem, the game that just went on hiatus, the last session was very similar. The DM was like "ok, so you killed the Voidspawn (a strange critter that was living inside a Sphere of Annihilation!) and while there's a few encounters left, I think you guys could take them easily, so I'll just give you the xp and treasure you'd get from them."

Then we went back to town, rested for the night, and all hell broke loose as the final villain completed his plan (that we didn't really have much chance of stopping) and had to go back to the dungeon (now in ruins) to fight him.

Everyone seemed alright with skipping past those last couple encounters, so I imagine everyone will have a similar reaction. I suppose it depends on when all this happens- if the big fight happens early in the session, I could run those encounters, but finishing up the adventure and setting up the next one sounds more interesting to me.

Or I could say "ok, if you guys really want to fight more drow and ogres, we could..." and I'm willing to bet by that point they'll be beyond sick of drow and their stupid stupid poison, lol.

 

[Konrad13]

Out of curiosity, what made you come to this place? (I think it was the OGL debacle, but I don't want to presume).

As a follow-up: If you, like many others, have "lost faith in WotC", I would like to ask:

Why did you have that sort of faith in them before?

Note: I honestly am interested in your perspective - I do not plan to argue with you.

The OGL debacle was definitely a part of it, but it has been a growing dissatisfaction with D&D overall since the end of 4e, my personal favorite edition. While I picked the core books and a number of adventures for 5e and even ran a few of them, after something like a decade it is just getting stale for me. Add to that every time WotC themselves bring up 4e it is either very passive if not just downright "lol, it sucked" (in the lego set they did little more than say it was "controversial" while the Rick & Morty set flat out shits on it by Rick being a complete ass and demanding no one speak of it).
And I guess it wasn't so much "losing faith" as just developing more and more of a mental block to things WotC/Hasbro feel like doing with the IP. Again, I love every edition to varying degrees and I'm not boycotting them, I just feel like going to other systems that I feel work better for me and the stories/mechanics I prefer but still stand by that once the older editions are in the CC the WotC/Hasbro will find I will buy older works (mostly 4e and the old TSR catalogue) but until they do so then other companies will get my hard earned money and time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't foresee any problem, the game that just went on hiatus, the last session was very similar. The DM was like "ok, so you killed the Voidspawn (a strange critter that was living inside a Sphere of Annihilation!) and while there's a few encounters left, I think you guys could take them easily, so I'll just give you the xp and treasure you'd get from them."

Then we went back to town, rested for the night, and all hell broke loose as the final villain completed his plan (that we didn't really have much chance of stopping) and had to go back to the dungeon (now in ruins) to fight him.

Everyone seemed alright with skipping past those last couple encounters, so I imagine everyone will have a similar reaction. I suppose it depends on when all this happens- if the big fight happens early in the session, I could run those encounters, but finishing up the adventure and setting up the next one sounds more interesting to me.

Or I could say "ok, if you guys really want to fight more drow and ogres, we could..." and I'm willing to bet by that point they'll be beyond sick of drow and their stupid stupid poison, lol.

If your players are on board with what you want to do, of course that's the ideal.

 

[Faolyn]

Because, I suspect, the intent is that your background is only really relevant near the start of your adventuring career, when you're still adventuring relatively close-ish to home. In other words, it's primarily a low-level feature.

As your adventuring career goes on, you become - both literally and metaphorically, and in both time and space - further and further distanced from your home and pre-adventuring background, and that background fades into obscurity to be replaced with the new "background" you've acquired; that new background being what you've done and who you've met during your adventures.

You'd think that they'd say that, then. There's literally nothing either in the backgrounds or in the text leading up to them that says "these are only meant to be effective when you're just starting out." I think it's reasonable to assume that a typical PC would need to use them less and less, sure--but that's very different from "these backgrounds stop working as you level up." That'd be like saying that 1st-level spells stop working once you hit 10th level.

Plus, this assumes that all games are travelogues that take you farther from your point of origin, which is certainly not the case.

 

[mamba]

Both of those reasons IMO harm verisimilitude and/or player agency, and I would therefore avoid making those choices for the Players.

If you defeat the big boss, the minions scatter, seems plenty believable to me. The players can then still decide to try to hunt them down / prevent that

 

[Hriston]

in our world and with our technology, sure, but even we do not know of people living on other planets / planes, so no, and even if you knew of Vistani as a people you would not have a specific person that you know as a messenger who can relay a message to your contact

Of course it's possible for people to exist of which one has never heard. That isn't in doubt! But that doesn't mean no one can ever have heard of people who live in places they haven't been, so I don't know why you think I would accept that kind of reasoning. It's also quite possible to learn and to know about, and even know personally, individual people who live in other places, but you're telling me that even if I could know about the Vistani, it would still be impossible for me to know, or even know about, any individuals among them, and you're asking me to accept this based on nothing but your own authority, without even a few words as to why. Why would anyone accept these statements as true when they don't follow any recognizable chain of reason?

you do it very much out of sequence and as far as I can tell while also ignoring what I wrote since

I can't be expected to have read or remember everything you've written in this thread. I'm just responding to the posts I'm quoting in the context of the conversation that led up to that point, and I'm doing it chronologically.

no, but they also are of no use as messengers to you because they are not in Ravenloft…

Clearly, I was talking about memories that represent knowledge of and about people in Ravenloft.

it is easier when you stop asking me questions

I'm not here to make your choice, whether to respond or not, easy for you.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Fortunately there's absolutely nothing stopping those tables from using the current background mechanics in their games.

That's true!

The OGL debacle was definitely a part of it, but it has been a growing dissatisfaction with D&D overall since the end of 4e, my personal favorite edition. While I picked the core books and a number of adventures for 5e and even ran a few of them, after something like a decade it is just getting stale for me. Add to that every time WotC themselves bring up 4e it is either very passive if not just downright "lol, it sucked" (in the lego set they did little more than say it was "controversial" while the Rick & Morty set flat out shits on it by Rick being a complete ass and demanding no one speak of it).
And I guess it wasn't so much "losing faith" as just developing more and more of a mental block to things WotC/Hasbro feel like doing with the IP. Again, I love every edition to varying degrees and I'm not boycotting them, I just feel like going to other systems that I feel work better for me and the stories/mechanics I prefer but still stand by that once the older editions are in the CC the WotC/Hasbro will find I will buy older works (mostly 4e and the old TSR catalogue) but until they do so then other companies will get my hard earned money and time.

Fair enough! I liked 4e as well, and there are a number of things that I think it did better than 5e does. Other games can be great, too. I think the Rick & Morty thing was supposed to be funny (more along the lines of saying that Rick is one of "those" hater/gamers), but I can see how it, on top of everything else, can really irk a 4e fan. Thanks for your answer!