I just have to ask, how can you have acquaintances without knowing them? Because some of the background features such as sailor explicitly state that it's someone you know. In other cases it's because you, or your family, is known.
D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
I just have to ask, how can you have acquaintances without knowing them? Because some of the background features such as sailor explicitly state that it's someone you know. In other cases it's because you, or your family, is known.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
If you don't want me to respond to your posts, you should stop responding to mine.So now you're digging up a thread from a week ago? To answer the same question I've already answered multiple times?
It was a simple question. Probably one I'll regret asking but still. That, and previously you had responded to a week+ old posting of mine.
FitzTheRuke
Legend
I disagree entirely. While I expect that you and I have very similar practices in how we implement story in our games, I can't say that I have any problem with the term "storytelling". You're strictly right in that there's a lot more to it than telling stories, but IMO it still fits. The results wind up being stories that can be told.
I'm gonna step in here, only because I think that this is a mistaken argument.
Just because you can't figure out how to make it work logically in your game, does not mean that @Hriston (or I, if I were part of his "side") cares less than you do about "logic".
It simply means that we can come up with logical stories for it. I would take serious insult if you were to try to claim that your games were somehow more logical than mine. I would say that I have a relatively "gritty" and "boots on the ground" style of DMing - I just don't have a problem incorporating outside story elements. I assure you, they'd make "logical" sense to both myself and my players and be world-consistent.
Or in other words, you're right that there are stylistic differences. Those differences have nothing to do with logic, though.
Why does figuring out a way of making a player ability work fall upon anyone but the player?
mamba
Legend
how much more clear than ‘specifically, you know the local messengers’ does it have to be for you to agree / admit that it is relying on the character knowing a person…
There is no one true way to run games. I just wouldn't enjoy a game as much where no matter where I go, what plane of existence, what time period, every background somehow just works. To me if, to use an example that happened in a game I played, our PCs time traveled 200 years into the past and I still have people recognizing me as a folk hero then that to me is illogical. Heck I've had games where we went to a mirror universe where we switched places with our PCs and were the villains of the realm. I just don't know how you could build a case for several background features in either of those situations. Those were extreme but travelling to another pocket realm (e.g. Ravenloft), another plane of existence (e.g. Avernus) or just halfway across the world where you generally only encounter natives who have never heard of you before (e.g. Chult) are all things that happen in published modules.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Absolutely, if you want to put the PC's in a scenario where their Backgrounds are meaningless, you could do so. But the question is, why?
When the players made their characters and selected Backgrounds, the DM has a chance. To use these as tools, to ensure that the player's choices are important to the campaign. To arrange for scenarios where one would be recognized as a noble or a sage or a criminal to make the game more interesting and fun.
If you're not planning on doing that, or don't want, you can simply say "hey guys, just make custom Backgrounds to grab proficiencies, features aren't going to come up".
The idea that you would let players choose Backgrounds for their characters and then immediately toss them into an alternate universe where they don't work strikes me as odd- why would you do such a thing?
And if it's determined that there will be a stretch of the campaign where Backgrounds aren't very useful (like the characters having to be in disguise while on the run), surely there'd be no reason for the players to complain about it- it's either the result of their own actions, or something the DM can communicate in advance.
There's this concept that's permeated this thread that there are DM's who allow Backgrounds and are then surprised that players want them to matter. Or that players want to use them to make demands of the DM that they were completely unprepared for. As if a Background is some kind of "DM counterspell" that the DM is forced to accept, and absolutely must allow in their campaign.
There are games where that's certainly a thing, but D&D isn't one of them. If you don't like Backgrounds because you don't want to make them important or matter, that's fine. But saying that it's impossible to make them important or matter? Ludicrous.
You totally can, if you build your game around them. If you don't want to build your game around them- then don't, but don't go saying that's the fault of Backgrounds!
The DMG has a very clear section on how a DM can work with their players and take their choices into account. If someone doesn't want to do that, or run their campaigns in that way, it's no different than deciding encumbrance is being used or we're tracking spell components, or Druids and Dragonborn don't exist in the game!
No one is forcing the use of Backgrounds on anyone. Bonds, Alignment, all of this stuff exists to be used or not, whether or not it's strictly labeled as optional- what DM doesn't have at least a page of house rules?
And if the players want something in the game, the DM still isn't "forced" to use it- the DM and the players can either come to some agreement or they don't have to play D&D together.
Another thing I keep hearing is that the DM shouldn't have to make concessions to their players- well that's true, you don't. And they don't have to play in your game. Surely, you can tell a player where the door is, if they're not a good fit for your group!
So where's the problem? Is it that you need a player and aren't happy that they want to use things in the PHB that you don't want to deal with? That they're saying "hey, Backgrounds are a thing, and the book doesn't say they're optional, so you have to make them work"?
That's not a problem you can lay on the rulebooks- I mean, seriously, if it was then everything the books tell players they can expect is problematic- from being able to play Drow to purchasing healing potions in shops for 50 gp.
And maybe someone here actually thinks that way. I'd like to think not, but maybe so. But in that case, your problem isn't Backgrounds- though it might be the fact that "SUBJECT TO DM APPROVAL" isn't plastered all over the Player's Handbook in large neon letters.
When the players made their characters and selected Backgrounds, the DM has a chance. To use these as tools, to ensure that the player's choices are important to the campaign. To arrange for scenarios where one would be recognized as a noble or a sage or a criminal to make the game more interesting and fun.
If you're not planning on doing that, or don't want, you can simply say "hey guys, just make custom Backgrounds to grab proficiencies, features aren't going to come up".
The idea that you would let players choose Backgrounds for their characters and then immediately toss them into an alternate universe where they don't work strikes me as odd- why would you do such a thing?
And if it's determined that there will be a stretch of the campaign where Backgrounds aren't very useful (like the characters having to be in disguise while on the run), surely there'd be no reason for the players to complain about it- it's either the result of their own actions, or something the DM can communicate in advance.
There's this concept that's permeated this thread that there are DM's who allow Backgrounds and are then surprised that players want them to matter. Or that players want to use them to make demands of the DM that they were completely unprepared for. As if a Background is some kind of "DM counterspell" that the DM is forced to accept, and absolutely must allow in their campaign.
There are games where that's certainly a thing, but D&D isn't one of them. If you don't like Backgrounds because you don't want to make them important or matter, that's fine. But saying that it's impossible to make them important or matter? Ludicrous.
You totally can, if you build your game around them. If you don't want to build your game around them- then don't, but don't go saying that's the fault of Backgrounds!
The DMG has a very clear section on how a DM can work with their players and take their choices into account. If someone doesn't want to do that, or run their campaigns in that way, it's no different than deciding encumbrance is being used or we're tracking spell components, or Druids and Dragonborn don't exist in the game!
No one is forcing the use of Backgrounds on anyone. Bonds, Alignment, all of this stuff exists to be used or not, whether or not it's strictly labeled as optional- what DM doesn't have at least a page of house rules?
And if the players want something in the game, the DM still isn't "forced" to use it- the DM and the players can either come to some agreement or they don't have to play D&D together.
Another thing I keep hearing is that the DM shouldn't have to make concessions to their players- well that's true, you don't. And they don't have to play in your game. Surely, you can tell a player where the door is, if they're not a good fit for your group!
So where's the problem? Is it that you need a player and aren't happy that they want to use things in the PHB that you don't want to deal with? That they're saying "hey, Backgrounds are a thing, and the book doesn't say they're optional, so you have to make them work"?
That's not a problem you can lay on the rulebooks- I mean, seriously, if it was then everything the books tell players they can expect is problematic- from being able to play Drow to purchasing healing potions in shops for 50 gp.
And maybe someone here actually thinks that way. I'd like to think not, but maybe so. But in that case, your problem isn't Backgrounds- though it might be the fact that "SUBJECT TO DM APPROVAL" isn't plastered all over the Player's Handbook in large neon letters.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I don't want to get into arguing semantics and there is a reason why I described it as a "pet peeve" - which is to say, yes it annoys me, but I don't think my personal feelings about it matter much in the big scheme of things.
That said, I see a "story-telling" version of D&D as something where the campaign is a context in which the players get to play out the story they imagine for their characters (individually or collectively) and there is an expectation (assuming you don't die) that this will be fulfilled, whereas I see (and prefer) D&D where the the only stories that are "told" are those that happened before the campaign began (if backstory is a big part of your game - it is not so much in mine, save as something for the DM to mine for hooks/events) and those we tell after the game is done (or parts thereof of are done) resulting from the PCs reacting to and acting upon the world. I eschew the sense of "narrative arc" or "story beats" when I run a game, though because of the way the human mind frames things, events can seem to nevertheless follow those frameworks in retrospect. For me, some of the most fun parts of D&D is when the events of the game play out in ways that would probably never happen in a book or movie.
Ultimately, however, if I think about it, my issue is not with people using D&D to play a storytelling approach (people should play however is fun to them and I think that something that rarely gets mentioned on these boards is that the same person can actually find more than one style/approach fun) it is the common claim that D&D is "at its essence" a storytelling game. I get that many people are using the term "storytelling game" more loosely than I am willing to - but terms matter to me when describing a play experience.
Quite often the background features as written could work in some campaigns at the very beginning when the PCs are just starting out. But then as the campaign progresses in many, if not most campaigns, you're traveling far and wide where having your reputation precede you or knowing someone simply doesn't make any sense.
I discuss backgrounds with my players before we start play that I don't typically use the background features as written, at least not for the duration of the campaign. If nothing else, the reputation you received or people you knew before you were an adventurer (oftentimes just a teenager) are minimal compared to the deeds and actions you've taken as the campaign progresses. If background is important part of the character (it rarely is) then I want it to have impact. It's just not going to be the overly simplified canned background feature.
Similar Threads
- Poll
