D&D 5E Joke Material Components

[pemerton]

I have to confess I think ADD DMG makes a better read than the others

I quite like Gygax's DMG, too. But when it comes to spell descriptions I prefer the approach of B/X or original D&D - the descriptions are terse and to the point (quite a bit like 4e, actually!). The really long descriptions in the AD&D PHB, replicated in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, which also include the material components, are what I'm suggesting are someone else's play output repackaged as play input.

I'd rather have props that I can ignore than have to build props that I need.

The limiting case of this outlook is that the whole scenario and all of play is prepackaged, all PCs are already built, etc.

Conversely, part of the point of play - for many people, at least - is that you create the story of your PC, both backstory and in play. Working out his/her idiom of casting is plausibly a part of that: one player has read A Wizard of Earthsea and casts spells through a staff; another has read LotR and calls upon the powers of Valinor; another has seen the cover of (the original) Unearthed Arcana and has a wizard carrying pouches and pockets of wacky components.

I don't see that the game needs to prescribe these things.

You seem to be assuming that the only people who are going to want it are people who already know of it. That's not true. There are 13 year olds and 8 year olds and 23 year olds everywhere who've never played the game just waiting to bust a gut or chuckle knowingly or roll their eyes and make womp-womp noises at these things.

Well, by equal turns I could say that there are 13 year olds out there waiting to learn how a rationing of player resources on a metagame basis can produce a great RPG experience. But D&Dnext isn't going to give them that. Is the goal of the edition to present one particular taste for those who want that? Or to present a generic and unifying "D&D experience"? I had assumed the latter.

I think it's part of D&D's distinct identity that it has this bit of goofiness. It's not all GRIMDARK MANSCOWL.

You're not persuading me more by talking about my preferred playstyle in a condescending way. You like joke D&D - fine. I don't. It doesn't mean I've got some problem with my sense of humour. I'm guessing that even in your game the somatic component for fireball is not a wizard chucking a brown-eye at his/her opponents - but I'm sure there'd be some 8 year olds out there who would find that hilarious!

I would say 1e did a better job to emulate Monty Python Holy Grail than Tolkien. Do we reject this as a bug ? Or do we nod at it ?

I personally prefer to avoid it. People who want it will introduce it without the rulebooks hinting at it. (And including wacky monsters like Rust Monsters or Beholders is an easier way to give a nod to goofiness, because ignoring silly monsters - for any given group's value of "silly" - is a much more straightforward part of D&D practice.)

On an aside, in 1e, wasn't each round a minute long? Enough time to dig into your spell pouch and pull out some nuts and chant a spell.

In a modern round, what's more jokey really? Using nuts to cast confusion, or pulling out nuts while casting a spell while ducking your enemy's attacks while coordinating your movements and timing with your allies -- that's a lot of fast thinking multitasking in 6 seconds! Frankly, it's one of the most impossible things in D&D. And if you don't think that's jokey, putting it to the Cinematic Test and see if it looks plausible on the big screen.

I think this is an issue too, but a different one (as you noted, it goes beyond joke components to all components). For me, I see this as being about the veneer of "simulation" that is part of the D&Dnext sensibility (healer's kits, with their improbably cheap and efficacious unguents and bandages, are another example). I find this stuff implausible and immersion-breaking, but for others it seems to be very important.

 

[Mike Eagling]

@KidSnide, @Mike Eagling - you're probably right on the nutshells. I'm not sure that makes me like it any better, though - it's still an oddly culturally specific reference (a bit like the carrots).

Ha! I'd not realised we'd both made the same point at essentially the same time

I really like the idea of spell components for some spells, they fit in with how I imagine them to be cast (which is generally how they're cast in a range of different films through the ages).

However, I've never seen a decent set of rules for them and they've generally been ignored in all the games I've played. I think that's a shame but also understandable. As for "joke" components... I don't personally see them that way, I see them more as folkloric tropes.

 

[Starfox]

A component pouch fixes it.

Repeated ad nauseum:

...the point of play - for many people, at least - is that you create the story of your PC, both backstory and in play. Working out his/her idiom of casting is plausibly a part of that: one player has read A Wizard of Earthsea and casts spells through a staff; another has read LotR and calls upon the powers of Valinor; another has seen the cover of (the original) Unearthed Arcana and has a wizard carrying pouches and pockets of wacky components.

I don't see that the game needs to prescribe these things.

I am with Pemerton in this. The issue here isn't convenience, or rules. It is style. If a player doesn't WANT a spell component pouch cluttering his style and making him smell like a lab rat, and said component pouch has no function but style anyway, why make it mandatory? Why force everyone to look like the Unearthed Arcana wizard or 3E's Mialee?

In short, style is a part of the "Golden Box" that player should have exclusive control over - his own character, it's personality, and style. Sure, the rules set a framework for this - classes, races etc - but they should not do this "just because". The framework is the crunch of the game, the rules that gives the game structure and empowers the PCs and monsters. The framework should leave style alone as much as possible.

 

[Mike Eagling]

Conversely, part of the point of play - for many people, at least - is that you create the story of your PC, both backstory and in play. Working out his/her idiom of casting is plausibly a part of that: one player has read A Wizard of Earthsea and casts spells through a staff; another has read LotR and calls upon the powers of Valinor; another has seen the cover of (the original) Unearthed Arcana and has a wizard carrying pouches and pockets of wacky components.

I don't see that the game needs to prescribe these things.

I think I agree with you here, up to a point. If I'm reading you correctly you want a separation between setting and mechanics; a "universal" system (at least as far as a fantasy game can be universal--i.e. not a GURPS-style any setting is possible)? Essentially a crunch core book, pushing all the fluff into support products?

 

[I'm A Banana]

The limiting case of this outlook is that the whole scenario and all of play is prepackaged, all PCs are already built, etc.

I've played games like that. Hell, as an occasional actor, I've had loads of fun discovering the variety and personal touches one can discover in a role when the whole next two to three hours are painstakingly detailed and memorized according to a rigid script. This isn't a turn-off for me.

Conversely, part of the point of play - for many people, at least - is that you create the story of your PC, both backstory and in play.

It's disingenuous to claim that this is the converse. You create a story in performance even when the story is prepackaged line by line, scene by scene, for you, ahead of time. I'd never really advocate for D&D to be quite that rigid, but it's not contrary to creating a story as a creative goal.

Working out his/her idiom of casting is plausibly a part of that: one player has read A Wizard of Earthsea and casts spells through a staff; another has read LotR and calls upon the powers of Valinor; another has seen the cover of (the original) Unearthed Arcana and has a wizard carrying pouches and pockets of wacky components.

I don't see that the game needs to prescribe these things.

Your view of it as a prescription isn't accurate. It's more of an example. No one's going to make you do it, and the game obviously can support doing it differently, does support doing it differently, and even actively encourages doing it differently. That gives you props, but leaves it up to you if you want to use that one, or a different one, or make your own.

You're not persuading me more by talking about my preferred playstyle in a condescending way.

I'm not trying to be condescending. My make-believe game of magical gumdrop elves is just as silly as yours is. Probably sillier, given the magical nuts.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I'm not that het up about it. I'm just surprised by what appear to be straight-faced suggestions that including these joke material components isn't simply a matter of mere taste (leavened with a high degree of fondness for past editions) but something of objective value which can teach new players the fun of fantasy RPGing.

As if those of who started with B/X or earlier editions - which had no material components - didn't work out that the game can be fun!

As if material components are more important to people's play experiences than (say) warlords, or inspirational healing, or metagame resources for players of martial PCs, or other stuff that is deemed too much a matter of contentious taste to include. I'm also reminded of Plansecape, in another couple of recent threads. 4e players lose most of the basic mechanical architecture of their edition, but we can't budge on Planescape or on Gygax's joke material components.

Hence my comment up thread - is D&Dnext the unity edition or the nostalgia/grognard edition?

This doesn't really tell me why we're spending book-space, and design effort, on including these things.

The only people who want to be told that a Confusion spell uses nutshells as its component already know that, because it's written in their old PHBs. The new game doesn't need to repeat that information.

In terms of setting out a framework for abstract, or player-chosen or GM-determined spell components, WotC could do worse than emulate the discussion of options for spellcasting "idioms" in the Burning Wheel rulebooks.

(I commented upthread that a lot of this stuff is really taking Gygax's actual play output and recycling it as input for new players. I'd rather have rules that offer me techniques to generate my own fun output. BW does that. Telling me that the material component for the Confusion spell is three nutshells does not do that.)

It looks to me like you are hijaking people's threads and opinions for your own agenda. You keep aluding to some debate about the warlord class and hinting that people are inspired by grognardia or whatever if they decide they don't mind the wacky spell components, or have reasons to believe that they are fine or could work, but I haven't seen any evidence for your allusions in this thread other that what you yourself are posting

 

[I'm A Banana]

It looks to me like you are hijaking people's threads and opinions for your own agenda.

Speaking in my moderator capacity, now: let us not descend into personal attacks, here. If you don't think someone is being earnest or forthright, it's best just not to engage with them. Trying to "call them out" isn't going to help the conversation much. Being confrontational and making people defensive isn't much of a way to achieve a mutual understanding.

 

[pemerton]

It's disingenuous to claim that this is the converse.

I'm happy to concede that I might be wrong. I deny that I'm being disingenuous - my post was sincere. Not all error is deception. Even someone as clever as me (!) can make an honest mistake.

Your view of it as a prescription isn't accurate. It's more of an example.

In which case it should be in a sidebar, or something similar - not built into the fundamentals of the presentation of the spell mechanics.

The 4e "Power" books give nice examples of these sorts of sidebars, setting out different ideas about how the mechanics of a class can be narrated at the table.

I think I agree with you here, up to a point. If I'm reading you correctly you want a separation between setting and mechanics; a "universal" system (at least as far as a fantasy game can be universal--i.e. not a GURPS-style any setting is possible)? Essentially a crunch core book, pushing all the fluff into support products?

I wouldn't go quite as far as you are suggesting here - I think the core book has to have some flavour and tone (and Mearls talked intelligently about this in his recent hit points L&L). But I think that this needs to be chosen judiciously and with sensitivity to the range of tastes among the prospective audience. Joke material components strike me as a particularly odd sort of tone/flavour to bake into the heart of the game.

Does that make any sense?

It looks to me like you are hijaking people's threads

The OP started a thread about hating joke material components. I am posting my agreement with the OP, plus my reasons (which are probably different, at least in part, from those of the OP, given what I know of the OP's posting history).

You keep aluding to some debate about the warlord class and hinting that people are inspired by grognardia or whatever if they decide they don't mind the wacky spell components, or have reasons to believe that they are fine or could work, but I haven't seen any evidence for your allusions in this thread other that what you yourself are posting

My reasons are pretty simple. A whole raft of mechanical options, and the story that they support, have been purged from D&Dnext supposedly on the basis that they are obstacles to unity. The warlord is the poster child for all that stuff, though not exhaustive of it.

Given the pretty big sacrifice that some D&D players are being asked to make in the name of unity, how important is the inclusion of joke material components? Conversely, if joke material components are deemed to be part of the essence of D&D in a way that all the stuff being expunged is not, then we don't have a unity edition at all. We have an edition that takes a rather narrow idea of what D&D is (eg at that point I'm not sure it even encompasses Moldvay Basic and its descendants, as opposed to AD&D and 3E).

 

[Dwimmerlied]

Given the pretty big sacrifice that some D&D players are being asked to make in the name of unity, how important is the inclusion of joke material components? Conversely, if joke material components are deemed to be part of the essence of D&D in a way that all the stuff being expunged is not, then we don't have a unity edition at all. We have an edition that takes a rather narrow idea of what D&D is (eg at that point I'm not sure it even encompasses Moldvay Basic and its descendants, as opposed to AD&D and 3E).

But joke material components, in this thread at least (if at all?), haven't been measured on its representation of the essence of D&D, just on whether people like them or not, but you are using it as a rebuttal to people stating that they like them or don't mind them. Further, I haven't seen much argument in this thread for keeping them based solely on their edition-sentimental value.

It may be a good idea to clarify my own intentions for myself; I did not assume anyone was dishonest or not forthright at all. I don't have a motivation to catch someone out or trap someone (that never works for anyone anyway), I was simply saying it how I saw it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm happy to concede that I might be wrong. I deny that I'm being disingenuous - my post was sincere. Not all error is deception. Even someone as clever as me (!) can make an honest mistake.

Fair 'nuff!

In which case it should be in a sidebar, or something similar - not built into the fundamentals of the presentation of the spell mechanics.

I don't agree. An empty space that needs to be filled isn't as useful for folks who just don't want to think much about it. Having a default that can be dropped without consequence gives us both something that people who don't think much about can use that is solid, and something that is easy for anyone who wants to think about it to change. A component pouch fixes it.