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

[MichaelSomething]

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

Not annoying: empowering! It's purposefully vague so the DM can select whatever stand works best for their table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Not if the GM forces them to move on to the next "narrative beat", which is what I read from the comment to which I responded.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not annoying: empowering! It's purposefully vague so the DM can select whatever stand works best for their table.

Or purposefully vague so as to avoid any possibility of lack of customers.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Or purposefully vague so as to avoid any possibility of lack of customers.

Reason number three vagueness is good is that WOTC won't try to bring a second Tyranny of Fun upon us!

RPG Theory: The Tyranny of Fun

The following quote was originally written by Melan on 26-7-2006 on ENworld, though I first read about it on this thread at theRPGsite . I find that it summarizes many of my concerns regarding 4E. " Interesting. This has been on my mind for a long time - that for the sake of balance,…

dragonspawnlair.livejournal.com

 

[Lanefan]

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.

They don't stop working, but they also (IME) don't necessarily get cast as often.

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

Do any of the WotC APs take place entirely within a reasonable distance of the PCs' home/starting point? (honest question, as I'm not familiar with all of them) Curse of Strahd certainly doesn't - the whole thing is set on a different plane.

Never mind the inherent assumption - or it might even be written out in the PH or DMG, I don't recall - that as the PCs gain levels and tiers, their adventures will take them farther and farther from home.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

They don't stop working, but they also (IME) don't necessarily get cast as often.

Do any of the WotC APs take place entirely within a reasonable distance of the PCs' home/starting point? (honest question, as I'm not familiar with all of them) Curse of Strahd certainly doesn't - the whole thing is set on a different plane.

Never mind the inherent assumption - or it might even be written out in the PH or DMG, I don't recall - that as the PCs gain levels and tiers, their adventures will take them farther and farther from home.

Let me think: If you're from Icewind Dale in Rhime of the Frostmaiden, you'd stay close to home most of the Adventure. Close enough, anyhow. Almost all of Storm King's Thunder sticks to the north part of the Sword Coast. Princes of the Apocalypse is in an even smaller part.

Aside from the opening "arrival" scene in Tomb of Annihilation, you could make your character from Chult. Similarly, you could make a native-to-the-Underdark character for Out of the Abyss. Tyranny of Dragons works its way up and down the Sword Coast. Dragon Heist is entirely in Waterdeep, as is Dungeon of the Mad Mage (technically).

Alternately, you're pretty much "whisked away" in Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Curse of Strahd, but much like ToA and OotA, there's no reason you couldn't make your character from either of the demiplanes that they take place in, in particular if you join a little later than "hour-1". That'd be up to your DM, I'd expect.

I'm probably forgetting a few... Oh! Decent into Avernus! Yeah, you're probably not "From Hell" but you could be from Elturel, which has a big presence. Tieflings could have family there, I suppose. If Baldur's Gate 3's Tiefling character, Karlach, is anything to go by, it's not impossible for you to be from Avernus, if you work with your DM (as they say).

I'm sure that I'm still forgetting an Adventure or two... But I think that most of them are Anthologies, MtG Settings, or Plane/Jammer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Reason number three vagueness is good is that WOTC won't try to bring a second Tyranny of Fun upon us!

RPG Theory: The Tyranny of Fun

The following quote was originally written by Melan on 26-7-2006 on ENworld, though I first read about it on this thread at theRPGsite . I find that it summarizes many of my concerns regarding 4E. " Interesting. This has been on my mind for a long time - that for the sake of balance,…

dragonspawnlair.livejournal.com

Hey, at least 4e took a stand on the kind of game they intended. I wish more games did that.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Example: In one of my games, we reached a new city and were heading for the inn so we could then go to the next step, which was heading to a specific temple, which was a necessary point in the overall quest. We're getting the town's flavor text, as per usual, and, well, I can't remember the exact order of things but one Perception check later my character spots a fortune teller's stand. My character has had some interesting experiences with fortune tellers before and I was usually on the lookout for one. And after a brief argument with the other players (one of the players... well, you know how never splitting the party leads to jokes about everyone going to the bathroom together? He's that kind of player), I slipped away and went to see the fortune teller. Thank goodness for a high Stealth score.

A big waste of time, I'm sure you'd say. The fortune teller had nothing to do with the temple, after all, or with what we knew the plot to be at that point. Strip it out; the game's better without it, right?

WRONG!

The fortune teller had legitimate info. Because I decided to ignore the "actual" plot and do something purely for roleplay reasons, I learned information that was both very useful for personal reasons and information about an upcoming major event that could have taken us by surprise otherwise. We may have learned that same information later on, if I hadn't chosen to go to the fortune teller--but now we had advanced knowledge.
/snip

What this tells me is that we should never, ever sit at the same table.

What I'm hearing is you deliberately ignored the wishes of all the other players at the table who had no interest in your side bar, to the point where you had to "stealth" away from the party and then justify it because your DM panders to this sort of thing by giving you benefits for doing it.

As a player at that table, I'd resent every single second that you spent on your sidebar. If it became a habit, I would quit the group. The fact that you care so little about what anyone else thinks is fun, in order to make your own fun the highest priority is the last thing I want from a fellow player.

As a DM, my reaction would be, "Ok, you talk to the fortune teller. We'll deal with that over email (or whatever format you care for) during the week between sessions. I would then deliberately turn away from you to the rest of the group and I would not come back to you until after they had dealt with the temple.

This is the exact opposite of what I want from a game or a player.

You keep telling me to change how I game. As if the way you game is somehow "superior". That it's somehow more fun. I've gamed at those kinds of tables. They are the furthest thing from fun for me. They work for you? Great. Different strokes. But, insisting that I should somehow start playing the way you want to play, so that we spend even MORE time on pointless sidebars, forcing the DM to constantly come up with stuff that rewards your spotlight hogging, is the last thing I want at a table.

 

[Faolyn]

They don't stop working, but they also (IME) don't necessarily get cast as often.

Exactly my point. They don't stop working.

(And I'd say that 1st-level spells do get used a lot, because some DMs believe that if you have to have the PCs use all or almost all of their resources each adventuring day, and that would include those first-level slots.)

Do any of the WotC APs take place entirely within a reasonable distance of the PCs' home/starting point? (honest question, as I'm not familiar with all of them) Curse of Strahd certainly doesn't - the whole thing is set on a different plane.

Well, there's assumption number 2: That everyone is (only/mostly) using pre-written adventures.

I tried to run CoS (except I had to do so many rewrites to make it halfway interesting), which takes place entirely within a smallish geographic location. I also had the PCs be natives to Ravenloft. I am currently in an Icewind Dale game, which thus far also has taken place in a smallish geographic location (no spoilers, please!). Yes, I know that there are other adventures that are long-distance travel and plane-hopping, but, well, the vast majority of D&D games I've played in have not been pre-written. One of the only D&D games that I've been in that actually concluded was 100% homebrew. I'm currently in a D&D game that's Forgotten Realms In Name Only and is a completely homebrew adventure.

Never mind the inherent assumption - or it might even be written out in the PH or DMG, I don't recall - that as the PCs gain levels and tiers, their adventures will take them farther and farther from home.

"When you assume..."

Sure, many games have the PCs go far afield. Maybe even a majority of them. But it's still ignoring those games who don't. How many tables do games that take place entirely within a city or kingdom, because they're not about dungeon-crawling?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly my point. They don't stop working.

(And I'd say that 1st-level spells do get used a lot, because some DMs believe that if you have to have the PCs use all or almost all of their resources each adventuring day, and that would include those first-level slots.)


Well, there's assumption number 2: That everyone is (only/mostly) using pre-written adventures.

I tried to run CoS (except I had to do so many rewrites to make it halfway interesting), which takes place entirely within a smallish geographic location. I also had the PCs be natives to Ravenloft. I am currently in an Icewind Dale game, which thus far also has taken place in a smallish geographic location (no spoilers, please!). Yes, I know that there are other adventures that are long-distance travel and plane-hopping, but, well, the vast majority of D&D games I've played in have not been pre-written. One of the only D&D games that I've been in that actually concluded was 100% homebrew. I'm currently in a D&D game that's Forgotten Realms In Name Only and is a completely homebrew adventure.


"When you assume..."

Sure, many games have the PCs go far afield. Maybe even a majority of them. But it's still ignoring those games who don't. How many tables do games that take place entirely within a city or kingdom, because they're not about dungeon-crawling?

That all makes sense. Can we all accept then that background features, regardless of how they are presented in the 2014 books, are in fact adventure/campaign dependent and therefore may not work as well (or at all) at all tables and in all campaigns?