D&D 5E Just One More Thing: The Power of "No" in Design (aka, My Fun, Your Fun, and BadWrongFun)

[Maxperson]

It's an interesting question. It really depends on where you feel that majority of emphasis should be placed, I guess. The vast majority of time spent playing D&D is spent ... playing D&D. And that has nothing, or at best, little to do with character concepts. I mean, take Brad (PLEASE TAKE BRAD!) who has played Legolas, the Elven Archer, for four decades. He doesn't care about character concepts, so long as there is a pointy-eared critter that can shoot a bow.

I don't agree with the assessment that character concept has nothing or at best little to do with playing D&D. You correctly point out that it CAN have little to do with it, if you're a Brad. However, for those of use to whom those concepts are important, it literally has everything to do with playing D&D.

Every choice I make, I make in character. My character concept colors how my PC perceives the game world, which affects my choices as a player, whether I will go to the King for information, a sage or the seedy underworld, how or if I will kill certain monsters and much more.

Where you feel the emphasis should be placed will depend on what kind of player you are.

One of my players like elven wizards. After about the 8th consecutive campaign with an elven wizard, the rest of the players conspired to pop him out of his comfort zone and started voting for campaigns where everyone was a dwarven non-caster, etc. Now he's choosing a variety of races and classes of his own volition. Even Brads can change.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Such animals grow as large as their environment and diet will allow, and then stop when they've reached the limits of their places.

Green anacondas will continue growing even when they are starving (not due to lack of fiod but due to not being able to digest enough food quickoy enough to not die. They wont stop growing just because they arent getting enough. or they will die after starting to struggle to move due to size. They never stop growing until they die. That is the only thing beyond a disease that will stop them growing. So they break that rule.

 

[generic]

Such animals grow as large as their environment and diet will allow, and then stop when they've reached the limits of their places.

The only limiting factor is what the organism requires to survive, unless, of course, that organism has a specific limit. There is simply too much variation to reduce biological diversity to a statement as simple as this.

 

[Arilyn]

I am making a Changeling character for upcoming Eberron campaign. I had specific ideas for the character but nothing was quite working to my satisfaction. Savant from Masterclass codex, however is perfect. The inquisitive just didn't quite fit. So hurray for more options.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One does not necessarily equate to the other. I didn't say rolling 1s makes someone look stupid... I said your PC will roll a whole heap of 1s (meaning they do not succeed in what they are trying to do a whole bunch of times), and occasionally your PC will look stupid. Which is true. Like occasionally your PC will drop to 0 HP and "fall unconscious", which for the "greatest swordsman in the land" seems to happen quite often and could easily be defined as "looking stupid". The way the game works, all PCs are meant to fail via mechanics much more often than they usually do if we were looking at them purely in a fiction or story sense.



Which is what I originally said. Many players (like you apparently) fall into the group that equates game mechanics with ability. But by that way of thinking... the "best swordsman in your land" has to be like a 20th level character because that's the best mechanical definition you have available in this game of Dungeons & Dragons. Or at the very least-- the best swordsman has to be the highest level sword-wielding character in your campaign setting. If you can't take a +3 / 1d8 PC seriously as the "best swordsman in the land"... then the numbers of every other character level are just as poor and ill-defining up until you reach that final character who is the highest level in your game, and thus gets the title of "best swordsman in the land". Which if that is what you wish to play, more power to you.

I, however, find that way of thinking needlessly restrictive, because it means that any character you start with at like 1st or 3rd level , is by definition a piece of garbage, because their mechanics suck compared to most other leveled characters in the setting. By equating mechanics to story, every starting character HAS to be an "Apprentice" type of character. Which, granted, is how WotC kind of defines the Levels 1-4 tier so it does have its place... but personally I think that's a stupid way of looking at it. Doing that means your narrative goes all over the place. You make a level 1 character that you describe as 10 year veteran in the military before becoming an adventurer? Well, that PC must have really blown as a soldier if they're only level 1 at this point and by the mechanics they suck compared to the other level characters in the setting. Doesn't matter that they are a 10 year veteran... if the mechanics define how good they are, then this level 1 veteran adventurer just blows. Not exactly how I prefer to look at things.

So I just get around that whole thing by not equating game mechanics to the fiction of the world. You can be a well-known swordsman even at 1st level in the narrative, because narrative doesn't care about mechanics. It is what someone does in the story (before, during and after the campaign) that determines how good they are, and how well-known they are, and how well-respected. If you make a PC and define them in the story as a 10 year veteran in the military, then that PC has the status, knowledge, and skill of a 10 year veteran and gets treated as such, regardless of whatever level they start at for purely game purposes.

As I said... most of you don't seem to play that way. Which, hey... whatever. You do you.

I guess I fail to grasp your point... If I call my level 1 PC 'greatest swordsman in the land' then what happens when I get my ass kicked by a random town guard? That's the type of result D&D mechanics will produce! Seems like what you want is not D&D...

 

[Garthanos]

I guess I fail to grasp your point... If I call my level 1 PC 'greatest swordsman in the land' then what happens when I get my ass kicked by a random town guard? That's the type of result D&D mechanics will produce! Seems like what you want is not D&D...

The DM decides that random town guard was secretly one of the many seeking to prove themselves and when you go back to try and find him they say he just joined the group by throwing money at them and they do not know who he really is. This resulting in a quest to take back his title from the usurper who obviously got lucky and he has lost his confidence since that event always distracted thinking about that other who defeated him so he is functioning much worse now than he ought to..... story story story.

 

[Fenris-77]

Harping on the specific wording is missing the point. The point was that the character's beliefs are not set by the mechanics, not should they be, nor should the players beliefs about the character be bound by the mechanics. All we can do with the mechanics is get a close as possible to our concept, everything else is down to narrative.

 

[Longspeak]

Good evening, long time listener, first time caller, love the show...

First of all,

I will stipulate, here and now, that RPGs are not cars.

I can't believe no-one else called you on this nonsense. Of course RPG's are cars!

That said, I agree with the general point of the thesis, that cramming more and more and more stuff until someone explodes isn't better. More stuff isn't better.

But... more choices are better.

I don't want Warforged in my game. I don't want most of the hundred or so different races from the various books in my game, for that matter.
I don't want a couple of the classes, and a lot of the sub-classes, either.
And while we're at it, I don't want a Tarrasque.

But darn it, I want the option of all those things.

D&D 5th would already be unsustainably bloated if everything in every book was mandatory. But there's no harm in choices, only good. I read Artificer and thought "That's what I was trying to do with this alchemist NPC!" I read Xanathar's and thought, "Celestial Warlock? YES!"

I say this as someone who left D&D back in Second Edition, when the bloat got to be too much, and I discovered more rules lite play. I had all the "Complete" books, all the Forgotten Realms supplements, etc, and somewhere in my brain (I was just a kid, okay?) I thought, "I HAVE to use all this stuff, but I don't wanna!" And I started playing other stuff. Mainly Star Wars, but that's another rant.

Looking back, there's obvious design issues in AD&D 2e, but at the time, it was the bloat.

Flash forward to August, 2018. My wife, for her birthday, has required me to attend a D&D game with her. I'd looked at 3e and 4e in the intervening years. Didn't like it, though I did like some of the changes from 2e to 3e. So I was all ready to dislike playing 5th, anticipating a bloated, weighed-down experience. But, She Who Must Be Obeyed had decreed that I would play, so I made a Rogue, because those are my easy mode.

Anyway, I had a blast and we joined the group and over the next year I leveled that character to 20 just in time for the climax of the series. He didn't stay a rogue as I multi-ed into Ranger and later into cleric. (Why? Story Arc.) Anyway, I read the PHB, and other source books, and in the intervening 30ish years I'd learned the skill of picking and choosing, and now I run my own game on Roll20 three times a week. And I love it because I have all these choices.

That's also why when Paizo had those sales on humble bundle, I bought 'em all. Choices.

In conclusion, RPGs are totally cars.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The DM decides that random town guard was secretly one of the many seeking to prove themselves and when you go back to try and find him they say he just joined the group by throwing money at them and they do not know who he really is. This resulting in a quest to take back his title from the usurper who obviously got lucky and he has lost his confidence since that event always distracted thinking about that other who defeated him so he is functioning much worse now than he ought to..... story story story.

It just seems quite odd to want to use D&D mechanics for this. I would think some sort of FATE-like system where you can define an attribute like "greatest swordsman in the land" and then leverage it in play. The above narrative could well still result (the diceless system I commonly use for this type of game for example could easily let you be defeated) but it would more likely be a result of the player balancing different character needs, etc. The GM could also dedicate some resources to making it happen, but that would likely mean that you would get a chance to prove your worth all the better later on.
Anyway, it would be a novel way of using D&D, just not one I would normally consider.

 

[Fenris-77]

Just because the character thinks X doesn't make it so. Fantasy fiction is littered with the corpses of great swordsmen who turned out to be 2nd best. Having a character belief smash itself on the rocks of reality is just as compelling, if not more compelling than having it be completely true. Just because D&D doesn't have a specific mechanic to leverage it in play doesn't change that. Role playing that belief to the hilt would, in most games, provide some great handholds for the DM to help make it a reality, or a chance at reality. Just building an optimized fighter doesn't provide anything like those same handholds, nor is it necessary for the character.