FormerlyHemlock
Hero
How many people play with GMs they don't trust and don't regard as having credibility? This is obviously not the market 5e is going for.
Seriously, "How many people ever play 5E for the first time with a new DM?" How many people haven't done that?
It seems unlikely that 5E wants to ignore that market, since 5E is the "Big Tent" edition which aims to be broadly accessible and bring in new players.
Besides, this thread AFAIK isn't about 5E's goals as a product--it's about your goals as a DM. The caveat here is, "If your players are into Fantasy (immersion) as one of their types of fun, don't do this thing on a regular basis unless you show your work." If your players are more the gamist type who like Abnegation via combat or narrative drama, then you don't need to worry about it, you can do it as much as you want just because it's Cool.
Quoting Steve Brust about his Dragaera novels:
StevenBrust said:The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.
The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.
I would say exactly the same thing about a D&D game. The adventure should be understood as a structure built to accomodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff, as judged by the standards of the DM and his implicit or explicit target audience. (But it must always be cool to the DM himself or he won't have fun running it, and a DM who isn't having fun is in major trouble.)
Edit: on the theory that tagging your product with keywords describing the cool bits is a way to connect published adventures with their target audience, I just searched DM's Guild for "Cloaks and Rapiers" and came up totally empty. "Beholders" gets me a bunch of older edition products, some of which I already own, none of them actual 5E adventures. But! "Mind Flayers" gets me one product (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/172230/Monsternomicon-Mind-Flayers) about a topic that I find cool. I will check this out. Also, no hits for "Baatezu" but one hit for "Pit Fiend"(http://www.dmsguild.com/product/196987/ART916-Devil-Pit-Fiend) and a bunch of stuff on traps, of which this one jumps out (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/200563/Grandmaster-Thief--Mechanical-Traps) due to having a realistic take on traps in the Full Preview. I find realism cool, so I will buy that.
This is the blurb that grabbed me:
GrandmasterThiefTraps said:Traps! Not puzzles. This isn't about solving a riddle. No trap designer worth their salt would tell you how to get past their security measures, however obscure the clues may be.
This is about being diabolical in your mechanical trap design. No runes to worry about, nothing to dispel, and no magical resistance to save you.
I find that quite cool, although I also find ridiculous gamist riddle-traps/puzzle-traps cool too if they can somehow be made realistic. (E.g. they were made by Trap Gremlins.)
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