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

[MichaelSomething]

The highly improbable happens on rare occasions (otherwise they wouldn't be highly improbable), but when it happens repeatedly it is no longer improbable. It's automatic and guaranteed. It's fine that it doesn't bother you, all we ask is that you accept that it's an issue with some people.

584 Improbable Causes - Giant in the Playground Games

 

[Hriston]

I think @Hriston very much is, or he does an awful job of drawing a distinction

Advocating? No, I think everyone should play how they like. The point I made up-thread is that I'm incredulous that DMs in general are prepping a level of detail in the setting that would lead to a conflict with the kinds of details the background features invite the player to invent.

 

[mamba]

Well, as Oofta says, why do you care? If it happens once in a blue moon, it's not at all hard to make it logical or just hand-wave the illogic away.

because I find it quite literally unbelievable, and believability is important to me. Also, I disagree with your interpretation of the feature, so in my reading it is impossible.

If I granted you to roll 3d100 and if they all come up 00 the feature works, would you be happy with that? That is still better odds than you actually would have…

 

[mamba]

Going back and reading your post, it seems you mean something like making the ship stop where the character thinks it does, and I'm still not following because it's trivially true that the character thinking something does not make that thing true in the fiction.

and yet is what you said, isn’t it?

What makes it true in the fiction is everyone at the table agreeing it's true in the fiction.

yes, that would make it true, and we are back at ‘the DM says you know no messenger here’…

But who decides? If it's the player's choice to play their character as someone who's sane or someone who's delusional, then they are the one roleplaying their character.

I don’t follow, we just agreed that something is not true just because the player says so.

If it's the DM, then the DM is doing the roleplaying.

The DM does not say ‘your character does not search for ships, instead he goes into a pub’, he says ‘you find no ships’

I do not want the Sailor background dragged into this, I was talking about the Criminal, the two are different…

Because it's impossible to find out things about other planes before you go there? Even if you're a sailor who's spent years acquiring knowledge about various ship routes?

we are back to highly unlikely to the point of near impossible, since you ended up on a random world and did not anticipate this.

Also, you were a sailor in your past and you can consider yourself lucky if you traveled more than one sea / ocean in one world, there is no way you knew of ship routes on other worlds from your background.
Same for the criminal, you know a local thieves guild, that is it.

If you planned this trip, that is something different

 

[mamba]

The point I made up-thread is that I'm incredulous that DMs in general are prepping a level of detail in the setting that would lead to a conflict with the kinds of details the background features invite the player to invent.

you’d be amazed how little prep that takes…

Player: I use my criminal feature to find a messenger and ask my contact to …
DM: you are in Ravenloft, you do not know any messengers here

Takes literally no prep at all, and not even an effort to come with something on the spot, as it generally would if the feature worked

All it takes is having an idea where the characters are from and where they are in relation to that to determine a probability

 

[Hriston]

Prove what?

Prove that the "problem" ever existed anywhere but in your head.

That players will, if given leeway to do things by written rules the wording of which guarantees those things will succeed, quite reasonably expect to be able to do those things - even when doing those things blows up believability and-or consistency? I don't see any need to prove this is a problem, if only because it's so blindingly obvious.

That's not a rules problem. It's a social contract problem. Players don't need rules to tell them they can break the social contract.

Or that a DM should ideally be finding and fixing problems with the rules before they arise rather than after? No proof required: the DM is objectively at least trying to do it right, and make the game work better.

What specific problems are you talking about here?

 

[Hussar]

more importantly, how often does it happen close to reliably.... it does not matter whether that is the only time the player wants to use the feature in the whole campaign, that does not suddenly make it more likely that they just so happen to stumble across someone they know just when they 'needed' it

You mean like “randomly” stumbling across an npc who has important campaign information?

 

[mamba]

You mean like “randomly” stumbling across an npc who has important campaign information?

kinda, I do not use that much either for that reason… either the NPC seeks you out because they want something from you, or you know who to look for / have to find someone, and in the latter case you knocking on random doors will not get you there either

 

[Faolyn]

because I find it quite literally unbelievable, and believability is important to me. Also, I disagree with your interpretation of the feature, so in my reading it is impossible.

If I granted you to roll 3d100 and if they all come up 00 the feature works, would you be happy with that? That is still better odds than you actually would have…

But that's only because you choose to have the odds are poor. You can always choose that the odds are something else. After all, you have chosen to believe that it's logical that all fighters (and all barbarians, rangers, and paladins) are proficient in all weapons, even though that is extremely illogical.

Almost nothing in D&D is actually logical. Why is this bit of illogic so important to you but other bits you're willing to ignore?

If your DM decided that your D&D fighter wasn't actually allowed to be proficient in swords because it's illogical that someone of your chosen social class would be able to afford one or been able to be trained in one, or because historically speaking, possibly wouldn't even be allowed to own one--would you be cool with that? Would you instead point out that limitation is illogical and unfun? Would you just leave the game? Would you suck it up and go adventure with your spear and shortbow instead, because those are the weapons you'd be logically allowed to have?

 

[Lanefan]

You mean like “randomly” stumbling across an npc who has important campaign information?

Indeed, and that too can (and does) tend to come across as overly contrived.

To be honest, pretty much the only times I'll use overly-contrived coincidences like this are a) if-when a player is trying to get a PC into, or back into, an active party or b) if-when a deity is taking a direct hand in things for whatever reason(s).