D&D 5E (2014) Legends & Lore 3/17 /14

[Iosue]

It's disheartening, though. It's like you were really excited by this job interview, learned about the company, researched the position, and absorbed the mission statement as your own. And then you get there, and they person you're interviewing with tells you it's a different position, at a different company, and actually all that stuff you read up on is out-dated now.

"Why'd I even read that and care about it, if I can't use it?"

Yeah, but this is like telling someone they will interview for a sales position, and they prepare for it by reading up on the company's internal internet servers and office supply chains.

The MM is a DM resource. It has never been, nor presented as, a player resource. If a player reacts, "Why'd I even read that and care about it, if I can't use it?" my response would be, "I dunno. Why did you? I didn't tell you to. The PHB doesn't tell you to. I let you know at the outset that my campaign world is not the default setting of the books."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, but this is like telling someone they will interview for a sales position, and they prepare for it by reading up on the company's internal internet servers and office supply chains.

The MM is a DM resource. It has never been, nor presented as, a player resource. If a player reacts, "Why'd I even read that and care about it, if I can't use it?" my response would be, "I dunno. Why did you? I didn't tell you to. The PHB doesn't tell you to. I let you know at the outset that my campaign world is not the default setting of the books."

"Don't read any of these interesting and awesome books!" is pretty awful advice to give a newbie who is excited about D&D.

 

[Iosue]

"Don't read any of these interesting and awesome books!" is pretty awful advice to give a newbie who is excited about D&D.

That's a non sequitur. No one's saying "Don't read any of these interesting and awesome books." People are just saying, "Don't assume that the information in the DM-resource MM applies to anything other than the default world of D&D, which the DM may or may not be using."

Maybe they read it and get inspired to run their own game. Great, that's what it's for. It's not there to provide players with information for their characters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's a non sequitur. No one's saying "Don't read any of these interesting and awesome books."

So when you say this,

If a player reacts, "Why'd I even read that and care about it, if I can't use it?" my response would be, "I dunno. Why did you? I didn't tell you to. The PHB doesn't tell you to.

, what you DON'T mean is: "You shouldn't have bothered to read the books?"

People are just saying, "Don't assume that the information in the DM-resource MM applies to anything other than the default world of D&D, which the DM may or may not be using."

Does the Jackalwere entry point that out? How about the lamia entry? Grazz'zt? No? Where might that info be included? Perhaps in the DMG which they shouldn't have bothered to read?

Listen, 3e had RULE ZERO in big bold letters right in the PHB. And people still had problems with how many rules were "required." If 5e mentions that each campaign is unique somewhere in the DMG or PHB, that's great, but if it acts like all D&D games share the same lore from there on out, guess which message is going to be more prominent?

Maybe they read it and get inspired to run their own game. Great, that's what it's for. It's not there to provide players with information for their characters.

It's not about character knowledge, it's about a player feeling like they have an investment in the time they spent learning about these things, as a player. It sucks to be told that all these things you're excited about seeing and experiencing, and expect to experience given that the game says this is How D&D Is (tm), aren't going to happen. It's a hassle to have to be the bad guy as a DM and say, "Look, I want you to get excited for this OTHER story we're telling here, drop the old one." It's a sour note to start off a newbie on. It's showing up at an action movie and getting a romance. It might be fine, but that's not what anyone told you was going to happen.

Default lore gives unrealistic expectations to people just starting off in a way that example lore does not.

 

[Hussar]

If the space is there then by all means present multiple campaign specific examples of monsters. But I have a suspicion that space is a bit more premium.

The mm version monsters have always been superceeded by specific settings in that setting. I'm not really seeing a problem with tying presented monsters together. Yes it will contradict specific settings but I don't have much problem with that. The monster manuals have always done that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If the space is there then by all means present multiple campaign specific examples of monsters. But I have a suspicion that space is a bit more premium.

The mm version monsters have always been superceeded by specific settings in that setting. I'm not really seeing a problem with tying presented monsters together. Yes it will contradict specific settings but I don't have much problem with that. The monster manuals have always done that.

So if space was at that much of a premium, I'd just advocate for a diversity of worlds being represented in the MM.

So the Mariliths are from Planescape and the Halflings are from FR and the Roper is from Greyhawk and the Aarakocra is from Dark Sun or whatever. Takes up no more space than a traditional MM, but gives accurate representation of the variety of D&D and doesn't pretend that D&D has default lore because it honestly doesn't, it just has example lore.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's not about character knowledge, it's about a player feeling like they have an investment in the time they spent learning about these things, as a player. It sucks to be told that all these things you're excited about seeing and experiencing, and expect to experience given that the game says this is How D&D Is (tm), aren't going to happen. It's a hassle to have to be the bad guy as a DM and say, "Look, I want you to get excited for this OTHER story we're telling here, drop the old one." It's a sour note to start off a newbie on. It's showing up at an action movie and getting a romance. It might be fine, but that's not what anyone told you was going to happen.

Default lore gives unrealistic expectations to people just starting off in a way that example lore does not.

The time investment as a player will be spent actually playing. The knowledge gained through that play will be applicable to the actual ongoing game. Anything the player wishes to read outside of that experience may or may not have any bearing on that ongoing game. A sour note to start a newbie off on is information overload. That is the reason for intro sets, so that play can begin without large walls of text. Newbies who are eager to devour large volumes of lore are probably interested in DMing, at least the ones who want to read all that stuff before they have even played very much.

As far as investing time in reading DM material as a player I suppose the same can be said of adventure modules then? A well prepared player will certainly want to know what scenario is being run so it can be studied properly. Should the DM in this case make sure the player's time spent is properly rewarded by making sure the scenario is run as written? We wouldn't want the player to feel like reading modules was a waste of time after all.

 

[Mistwell]

The reliance on proper nouns in monster descriptions is both useless and distracting.

People in this thread said they find it useful.

Is it just that, if it's not useful to you then it doesn't matter if it is useful to anyone else? Or is it that you didn't read the thread and just wanted people to know our opinion without reading theirs?

 

[Kinak]

I really like that they're baking in some connections between monsters and their approach on hags sounds like a great start, but the jackalwere example leaves me cold.

With demon lords being assumed in the MM, but not other named gods or NPCs, those demons gain a disproportionate amount of story time and become the default big bads in any setting that accepts the MM.

I have a feeling that's a conscious brand decision, but one that I already find pretty tiresome. I wish they'd either go all the way, giving us a lot of proper nouns, or use the demon lords very sparingly.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Mistwell]

Perhaps these setting-specific fans want completionism for one-true-wayism, rather than content that helps other DMs?

This is hilarious. YOU advocated one true way, but saying nobody finds it useful. You play it however the heck you want to play it - but the proper nouns are useful for some people, and don't harm you by being there if you're not going to use it. How is that one true way? Are you feeling forced to use it? Is the sentence or two making the reference somehow tainting for you the entire rest of the paragraphs of descriptions?

Proper Nouns are distracting. The DM stops thinking about the scene and starts grappling with some random NPC in some random planar location somewhere else. The best case scenario is if this irrelevant NPC exists. Worse. These random NPCs and their random cosmological locations probably dont exist in other settings, so the description leaves the DM with no description at all.

In no instance is the sum total of the description the proper noun reference. It's usually a single sentence in a series of paragraphs describing the creature. In zero cases that I have seen would a DM be left with no description at all if they ignored the proper noun reference.

Reliance on proper nouns also reduces the value of the monster book for other settings.

It increases it actually, because if there is an analogue in that other setting for the named proper noun (and there almost always is) then you have a reference point to start from that you wouldn't otherwise have.

It makes little sense to pay money for setting content that the DM plans to ignore in the first place.

Then houseruling should be banned, because it's always done with a rule they paid for that they are ignoring.

Why pay money to rewrite everything

Everything? How on earth can you justify calling this everything, when it's such a very small part of monster descriptions?

Who cares if (insert powerful unique creature here) did it?

I do. Others in this thread do. We've explained why, and those reasons are not meaningful to you. Fair enough. But, quit pretending you've got some lock on all opinions on this topic by claiming nobody thinks different than you do on this topic (which you've claimed three times now).

The players looking at the scene will never know this. And even if they did, who cares? Proper nouns are useless and fail to give the DM the tools that the DM needs to describe an encounter.

Four times now.