D&D 5E On rulings, rules, and Twitter, or: How Sage Advice Changed

[Ovinomancer]

I'm trying to support your understanding of the term genre and what it describes, hoping you'll recognize category (roleplaying game) and genre (fantasy) are separate descriptive terms.

Um, why would I be confused about this? I think you're trying to assert that RPGs can't have their own genres, but this isn't true. D&D is a very strong genre, and the rules support it or you end up with mutiny (see 4e, which actually moved away from the baseline genre of D&D and received strong pushback for doing so).

Again, we've moved on from that discussion. We're talking about tropes now.

We apparently haven't, because your tropes argument rests entirely on the argument about Inspiration and how BIFTs work.

The rules for personality and background contain the tropes: The criminal seeking redemption, the folk hero following her destiny, the noble obliged to his subjects, etc.

Or the criminal not seeking redemptions, or the folk hero succumbing to baser desires, or the noble ignoring everything to be a murderhobo. You're cherry picking, and basing your argument on the fact that these are somehow elevated or reinforced, but they aren't.

These tropes are common in the genre of fantasy.

So? There are others, and these aren't necessary nor sufficient for D&D. Murderhoboing is far more integral to the definition of D&D than anything you've listed.

Can you engage those tropes, can your game feature them heavily? Absolutely! But this is that sprinkling on top, because your lawful good paladin will still solve most of their problems with combat, they will still start zero to go to hero, and they will still be absolutely expected to subsume any and all personal traits, bonds, goals, and wants to the party zeitgeist.

As I said previously, Chapter 4 is instructive. It outlines the common tropes and then offers to reward you for leaning into the cliché.

It offers no such rewards, by the very rules you're quoting. It offers a possibility of a rewards, but the DMG advice that pairs with this spends more time on other reward structures than it does on rewarding BIFTs.

And it does offer tropes, but these aren't the ones that define the D&D genre, nor are they anywhere near all about alignment, nor are they even coherent with each other. You can use them to get to some tropes, but you have to be aware of that trope and working for it or it's just an accident, because Chapter 4, at best, offers you fragments you can puzzle together -- it certainly doesn't offer you whole concepts.

 

[mrpopstar]

The context is critical & being ignored. I would agree with you on that for rising & would like to on vrgtr, but the problem is the core rules being too tightly aligned with the needs of FR & FR type games. For a more black and white example, Hasbro owns my little pony & could hypothetically pay Chaosium to let someone write the most incredible My Little Pony sourcebook.... for Call of Cthulu. You don't need to know much about either of those things to realize my little pony & Call of Cthulu are probably violently incompatible without major rules changes & rules rewrites. Simply declaring that the ponies cannel the magic of sanity instead of friendship against the unfriendly elder gods won't fix that clash either. The same kind of thing applies to having the settings for that great sourcebook and... that... uhh... Other... sourcebook because the settings depend pretty heavily on rules structures that no longer exist.

I understand you to be saying that the core rules don't support the Dark Sun campaign setting properly.

 

[mrpopstar]

Um, why would I be confused about this? I think you're trying to assert that RPGs can't have their own genres, but this isn't true. D&D is a very strong genre, and the rules support it or you end up with mutiny (see 4e, which actually moved away from the baseline genre of D&D and received strong pushback for doing so).

You need to revisit the definition of genre.

We apparently haven't, because your tropes argument rests entirely on the argument about Inspiration and how BIFTs work.

You need to revisit the definition of trope.

Or the criminal not seeking redemptions, or the folk hero succumbing to baser desires, or the noble ignoring everything to be a murderhobo. You're cherry picking, and basing your argument on the fact that these are somehow elevated or reinforced, but they aren't.

So? There are others, and these aren't necessary nor sufficient for D&D. Murderhoboing is far more integral to the definition of D&D than anything you've listed.

Can you engage those tropes, can your game feature them heavily? Absolutely! But this is that sprinkling on top, because your lawful good paladin will still solve most of their problems with combat, they will still start zero to go to hero, and they will still be absolutely expected to subsume any and all personal traits, bonds, goals, and wants to the party zeitgeist.

It offers no such rewards, by the very rules you're quoting. It offers a possibility of a rewards, but the DMG advice that pairs with this spends more time on other reward structures than it does on rewarding BIFTs.

And it does offer tropes, but these aren't the ones that define the D&D genre, nor are they anywhere near all about alignment, nor are they even coherent with each other. You can use them to get to some tropes, but you have to be aware of that trope and working for it or it's just an accident, because Chapter 4, at best, offers you fragments you can puzzle together -- it certainly doesn't offer you whole concepts.

Oy.

 

[tetrasodium]

I understand you to be saying that the core rules don't support the Dark Sun campaign setting properly.

Spoiler: turbo facepalm

The problem is that "baseline", the rules support & reinforce it time and again to the extent that
rules previously altered & highlighted to reinforce the baselines of settings that venture away from the "default assumptions" were often removed or coded against by rules designed to reinforce the needs of the first few settings without the red underline. It takes more than simply describing the setting & maybe adding a couple races classes archetypes and/or items but rising & vrgtr do not take those steps even to baby step degrees.

 

[mrpopstar]

Spoiler: turbo facepalm

View attachment 141605

The problem is that "baseline", the rules support & reinforce it time and again to the extent that
rules previously altered & highlighted to reinforce the baselines of settings that venture away from the "default assumptions" were often removed or coded against by rules designed to reinforce the needs of the first few settings without the red underline. It takes more than simply describing the setting & maybe adding a couple races classes archetypes and/or items but rising & vrgtr do not take those steps even to baby step degrees.

Okay. Thank you for explaining.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You’ve never seen changes to those things that actually change them rather than rename them?

I’ve been told that my changes to play a fantasy space opera made the game “not D&D” even though I didn’t change any of the things you’ve listed, so I’m not convinced that D&D even has all that solid a definition.

Well, you're always going to have some pretty rigid definitions for some people.

But I think once you get away from the obvious "D&D with a different coat of paint" games, it becomes progressively harder to find games that have all of (or even a majority of) classes, levels, level elevating hit point, fire and forget spells, attack rolls modified by armor, let alone some of the more specific class/monster/spell things that tend to carry over even to alternate settings.

Heck, even when you're getting games actively trying to hit some D&D tropes, they tend to get to them different ways.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You need to revisit the definition of genre.

Genre:

a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.

That's how I'm using it, so, thanks!

You need to revisit the definition of trope.

Trope:

a) a recurring theme or motif, as in literature or art
b) a convention or device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in a creative work

Also how I'm using it. Good review!

Oy.

If you can't respond, please don't.

 

[DammitVictor]

You know, I used to believe that "Skip the Sage" was the column's title. Later on, I started to think it was intended as advice.

I used to think that... just trying to follow the rules the way they were intended to work, with exceptions made for intentional house rules, was good enough for most games and most gamers. Either I'm getting older, or I'm getting more authoritarian in my old age, but I find myself thinking that I need to adopt more and more rigid positions on the rules of any game that I play, because I'm constantly finding myself having to defend them against players who think we're playing a very complicated boardgame and they can get special privileges-- vis a vis "the rules"-- simply by being louder and dumber than everyone else at the table.

I play roleplaying games to get away from the dismal reality of 21st century politics.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I play roleplaying games to get away from the dismal reality of 21st century politics.

If you ever thought being in an RPG group was going to get you away from politics, you either were an incredible optimist, or didn't understand what politics was. I learned some of my best lessons about politics from dealing with an extended gaming group with multiple GMs.

 

[mrpopstar]

Genre:

a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.

That's how I'm using it, so, thanks!

Can you explain "the D&D genre" using that definition so I can understand what you mean?

This is where I'm coming from...

• category of artistic composition: game
• genre/form: tabletop, pen and paper
• genre/style: roleplaying
• genre/subject matter: fantasy, science fiction

Where does "the D&D genre" fit? Under form, style, or subject matter?

Trope:

a) a recurring theme or motif, as in literature or art
b) a convention or device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in a creative work

Also how I'm using it. Good review!

Can you explain "the tropes of D&D" using that definition so I can understand what you mean?

It has been my stance that the rules for personality and background are a device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character in the game of Dungeons & Dragons.