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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6206004" data-attributes="member: 2067">No. I'm not making a prediction, I'm stating that the default effect is real and significant, even though D&D says right up there in front that you can change anything you want, because telling people that they can change a default is not enough. As the studies show, decisions are often constructed at the moment of request, and if no request is made, a decision to go with the default is presumed to be the wisest/most sensisble/"intended"/easiest/least costly position. A default suggests a preferred path. Since that's not the case in D&D (the ideal path, the most rewarding path for any group, is the path that they actively choose), it's bad design to have a default.If I was to predict what the fallout of assuming a default in 5e might be, I would predict that it would be something like the fallout from presuming a default in 4e. You have some people that love it, you have some people that adjust certain elements of it, and you have some people that just say "Um...no" and go play Pathfinder (or whatever). This regardless of a big Rule Zero printed right up front. 3e had that, and a lot of folks still thought you should play the grapple rules as they were written. 4e had that, and a lot of folks still decided that they'd go with demon succubi in PF rather than change a keyword in 4e thankyouverymuch.The benefits of not presuming a default include giving a useful decision-point for the DM, at which point they are actively provoked to look at this option not as a default (with all the attendant problems that defaults have), but as something they can actively select if it provides the right benefits for their game (a much more honest portrayal of how a good DM runs the game anyway). Telling someone that they can change a default isn't enough, as these studies show, so even if he read it, it likely wouldn't affect his behavior.This panicked false duality ("If we don't have WotC telling us what monsters are like, we'll have NO MONSTERS!") keeps popping up, and it keeps being woefully misinformed. The alternative to a default isn't nothing. It's a field of options! They will have something to begin with. They will have LOTS of somethings to begin with! And they'll be making an informed choice about which something they want to use rather than tripping down the trail of presumed monolithic defaults. It creates better games, better DMs, stronger encounters, because it requests a little bit of active decision-making that a good DM should be doing anyway.</blockquote>

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