D&D 5E Krynn's Free Feats: setting-specific or the future of the game?

[Jaeger]

The same could be asked of those that want a deadlier game?

My reply covers this.

Just like there are options in the DMG to make things harder, one could do similar system tweaks to make things even easier.

But when we get to: "At this point we ignore the mechanical system entirely, because 'story'."

That is not a system tweak to make the game mechanically easier! That is literally setting aside the dice/system altogether, because reasons.

A complete apples to oranges comparison.

Which leads to:

Exactly. D&D on "hard mode" is more than acceptable but people reducing lethality are often told they'd be happier playing something else. But D&D is suppose to be open to house ruling. 3rd party publishers play around with it all the time giving us AiME, Pugmire, Beowulf, to name just a few.

If their posts were about altering the system mechanics for more forgiving death saves, adding HP, or changing combat options, you would have a case.

Because the most common options typically floated are in the vein of:

-A "death flag": the PC can't be killed (they can suffer and lose, but not die to a random roll) unless the player explicitly says the character is willing to die due to the importance of a particular scene.

-Without ... bowing to the will of the dice.

i.e. The reason people wanting reduced lethality are often told that they might be happier playing something else is because oftentimes their 'solutions' for reducing game system lethality amount to no more than PC "Plot armor" when they say that they will knowingly ignore/set aside undesirable results of the game mechanics, solely for narrative purposes.

Such a solution is not just another 'house rule' making the game system mechanically harder or easier. It is fundamentally altering the intended play paradigm of the game.

If your desired play paradigm is so removed from the games intended mode of play that your 'solutions' amounts to flat out ignoring what the game system is designed to do, then yeah, you just might be happier playing something else...

 

[Maxperson]

My reply covers this.

Just like there are options in the DMG to make things harder, one could do similar system tweaks to make things even easier.

But when we get to: "At this point we ignore the mechanical system entirely, because 'story'."

That is not a system tweak to make the game mechanically easier! That is literally setting aside the dice/system altogether, because reasons.

A complete apples to oranges comparison.

Which leads to:


If their posts were about altering the system mechanics for more forgiving death saves, adding HP, or changing combat options, you would have a case.

Because the most common options typically floated are in the vein of:

-A "death flag": the PC can't be killed (they can suffer and lose, but not die to a random roll) unless the player explicitly says the character is willing to die due to the importance of a particular scene.

-Without ... bowing to the will of the dice.

i.e. The reason people wanting reduced lethality are often told that they might be happier playing something else is because oftentimes their 'solutions' for reducing game system lethality amount to no more than PC "Plot armor" when they say that they will knowingly ignore/set aside undesirable results of the game mechanics, solely for narrative purposes.

Such a solution is not just another 'house rule' making the game system mechanically harder or easier. It is fundamentally altering the intended play paradigm of the game.

If your desired play paradigm is so removed from the games intended mode of play that your 'solutions' amounts to flat out ignoring what the game system is designed to do, then yeah, you just might be happier playing something else...

There is more to difficulty than PC death. You can opt to have death be completely off the table, without having failure off the table, combat mechanics be off the table, skill mechanics be off the table, and more. In fact, you can dial up that difficulty if you wanted to and still have no death involved.

While I would not want to play in a game without the possibility of death, others do want that and they are still playing D&D. They shouldn't be told that D&D is not for them.

 

[Azzy]

My reply covers this.

Just like there are options in the DMG to make things harder, one could do similar system tweaks to make things even easier.

But when we get to: "At this point we ignore the mechanical system entirely, because 'story'."

That is not a system tweak to make the game mechanically easier! That is literally setting aside the dice/system altogether, because reasons.

A complete apples to oranges comparison.

Which leads to:


If their posts were about altering the system mechanics for more forgiving death saves, adding HP, or changing combat options, you would have a case.

Because the most common options typically floated are in the vein of:

-A "death flag": the PC can't be killed (they can suffer and lose, but not die to a random roll) unless the player explicitly says the character is willing to die due to the importance of a particular scene.

-Without ... bowing to the will of the dice.

i.e. The reason people wanting reduced lethality are often told that they might be happier playing something else is because oftentimes their 'solutions' for reducing game system lethality amount to no more than PC "Plot armor" when they say that they will knowingly ignore/set aside undesirable results of the game mechanics, solely for narrative purposes.

Such a solution is not just another 'house rule' making the game system mechanically harder or easier. It is fundamentally altering the intended play paradigm of the game.

If your desired play paradigm is so removed from the games intended mode of play that your 'solutions' amounts to flat out ignoring what the game system is designed to do, then yeah, you just might be happier playing something else...

No, you seem to be setting up a stance that isn't actually reflected in what other posters have said. Have fun with that.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok, so it is rather straight forward:

For the first session you do need to lay down the basic premise of the game world, and some initial hook to get the PC's rocking and rolling.

sounds alot like the games I have been talking about so far

Elevator pitches : "A Russians/eastern Europe centric feudal (not the right word but close it has a weird wheel of royalty the DM explained but I doubt I could do justice so close enough) world"
"the dark isle is like living in a mix of a shadowfell island and british isles...it's almost always dark and raining, you can count on one hand the amount of times you have had 3 days of sunshine in a row in your life on your hands, but it is full of deadly monster and bounty hunter/monster hunter traveling heroes with no over arching orgnization"

I will use a Classic example: B1 keep on the Borderlands is often used as a campaign starting point. (It can be set down in lots of D&Dish settings).

I don't often use mods but I have run/played in a few... part of my love (especially running) is creating a map and creating a world for my players to explore... but so fat mostly the same

A simple premise being that the PC's have decided to seek their fortunes on the borderlands, the Castellan of the keep is rewarding sellswords that help against the goblin and orc incursions. Thus freeing his men to patrol the trade road.

that premise already sounds more like a pre set story then the one I played in as a warlock... at no point did the DM have ANYTHING like that set up until after we made characters and pitched backgrounds

You have several factions: Bandits, lizardmen, the necromancer and monster factions on the caves of chaos. The you have the Castallan and several NPC's in the Keep. All with their own goals and agendas. All in a constant state of flux once the PC's start interacting with the setting, Npc's and Factions.

still sounds like the games I have described... everything changeds though once PCs start to interact.

So the PC's may start out on a simple orc hunt, but once they start meeting and interacting with the other NPC's and factions in the area the game can go in many different directions.

but once you start down a path... that is pretty much showcaseing a path.

Maybe they meet the bandits and successfully parley with them.

we do that ALL THE TIME... it is awesome turning potential enemies into alies and vice versa.

Join them or take them over? Do a deal with the Castellan with their now bigger forces? Maybe they don't like the risk/reward of orc hunting. So they decide to rob the Keep? Maybe they encounter the necromancer and find out that he is conspiring with some high ranking NPC's in the keep to destroy it - what do they do now?

and again... each of those choices then focuses the campaign... lets take 1.
So they decide to rob the Keep?
okay... but if you have 4 PCs (that is what the warlock game had) and you start down this route, and 1 character has all the theives guild contacts and a 2nd has some cool spells that will help with the robbery and a 3rd has the skills needed to pull of the robbery and the 4th doesn't really have any 1 thing but is going along... and player 1 dies... you either A) have to make Bob 2nd to be the new theives guild contact, B) go without theives guild contacts, or C) the DM has to give another player those contacts. However if BOTH player 1 and 2 die you have lost the spells you needed for your plan AND your contacts...
You can not TPK (only 1/2 the PCs die) but if they are the right 1/2 you throw the game into a tailspin. Now you CAN just switch ideas, but at that point why not just make a new world and start over? you already have the main threw line you choose messed up, and 2 of 4 people making new characters... You don't even need to make a new world persay, but just start over with a new group a new story and all 4 make new characters in the same world and choose a different hook.

The options and paths are near limitless.

in theory they are limitless, in practice you have several hard limits of what you can and cannont explore, and each choice opens new ones and most likely at least sometimes closes others... the farther the game goes the more you close the less likely you are to be able to just interchange PCs

And if they decide to follow up on that rumor that the village of Homlet is having troubles, they may decide to go take a look. Or they might not. It doesn't matter. As the GM I am managing the chaos created by the PC's. Having the factions and NPC's reacting to what is going on during play.

I don't see how that isn't a story line

There is no need for an overarching storyline because the PC's are in a setting of adventure opportunities,

okay PC choseing the story line doesn't make it any less of a story line... so I am not understanding.

In my game my players could go anywhere on the land mass I provided including 3 countries (well 2 countries and a city state) and 3 independent small settlements... quickly in the first few games they found out about another landmass a month away by boat (opening up more in theory) however as they chose places to go THEY created the story... all I had was a dozen different notes (some as short as 3 sentences some as long as 12+ paragraphs) about what was going on in each area... every few weeks as they went places I updated each set of notes. That doesn't mean that loseing a character isn't a MAJOR issue, and that any new characters can just peg in no bumps

and are free to go and do what they want to improve their lot in the world. Causing all kinds of varied consequences, mayhem, and in-game fallout in the process.

again you are describing a story line

It is very player driven campaign play.

what is a non player driven campaign? I mean even Curse of Strahd is player driven (where you go, what allies and enemies you make, how you interact with the title character of the mod)

This is incorrect. They are fully able to go in a completely different direction.

"Screw this, Let's go be Pirates." Is always an option.

where it is an option why not just stop this game and MAKE a pirate game at that point? even if Pirate was an option 6 months ago, why would all of these characters choose and work togather to change so much? Why not just start over (even in the same world if you can't make new ones quick) and just fully do pirates?

And unless the payer is playing every PC as a clone of their own personality; each character is different, influencing the party in different ways.

yeah see thats the problem. in early game 1 PC is most likely (but not always) not going to be the main infulence of a group, but as games go bye and the interconeccted PC/NPC networks start to form you will always find that some characters take on roles... loseing too many or too important of roles change the game in MAJOR ways... and I have found can end campaigns.

Seeing as how I had to explain how running a game without a storyline works, I think I get it pretty ok...

I'm not sure you do... after push one true wayism (and embracing it) you have gone on to describe story lines saying they aren't story lines...

Not my idea - "...the GM does not have to resort to system manipulations in order to serve the outcome of any preconceived 'story'." - is a reasonable extrapolation based on other posts.

no it isn't.... nobody is talking about "Oh, your character should be at 0 but we don't want my story to end so he/she isn't" we are talking about campaigns ending when characters die because without them it is just as easy to just start over.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I wonder what it would look like if everyone that got the 'stop playing in the system' response left D&D...

my guess is that WotC would panic and put out a new edition in 6 months to a year to try to get those players back

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't disagree with this, although implementing something like a simple death flag is no major hack to D&D.

yeah... i mean it doesn't sound like a game I want to run, but it isn't a major change... I would play that D&D and not think twice

 

[Vaalingrade]

my guess is that WotC would panic and put out a new edition in 6 months to a year to try to get those players back

Won't help because their fans base LOVES to try to throw people out of the space.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Won't help because their fans base LOVES to try to throw people out of the space.

it's intresting becuse I have seen it so many times... I wonder how D&D ever got the idea it was inclusive when so many players are not

 

[Vaalingrade]

it's intresting becuse I have seen it so many times... I wonder how D&D ever got the idea it was inclusive when so many players are not

Edit: I should say 'a portion' of their fanbase.

Because they tend to cloister themselves away from everyone else until it's time to go online.

 

[Maxperson]

it's intresting becuse I have seen it so many times... I wonder how D&D ever got the idea it was inclusive when so many players are not

Because you hear negative stories more than positive ones, because human nature. It's human nature to complain loudly when you don't like something or attack that which you don't like. It's not human nature to tell stories of good things nearly as often. So the much smaller numbers of anti-inclusive people get the lions share of the spotlight. It's like stories of murder in the news vs stories of people saving lives. If the difference in the numbers of each of those stories was truly representative of how life is, it would be foolish to walk out of your door in the morning, and you'd probably still die that day to someone breaking in.