D&D 5E Players railroading dungeonmasters

[DEFCON 1]

It hand waves, it's easy, and in my opinion it's also [unnecessary].

Other people feel otherwise and that's great for them. They do them and I do me.

 

[hopeless]

I've been wondering about the age difference too, but whilst others have been looking at it that they age normally my view is they don't age normally.
For example my wood elf cleric I went with the view that they age 7.5 times more slowly than a human does thus when my back story mentions her venturing into the Prime Material World that's connected to her Feywild Refuge when she's 98 years old in human equivalent terms she's a little over 13 years old.
Yes she learns quite a bit of stuff, but she isn't adventuring she's growing up and part of that is dealing with the world she's trying to adapt to.
BY 112 years of age she has been married for a couple of years and giving birth to a child of her own albeit looking like she's barely 15 six years later she's fleeing back into her Refuge with her 6 year old half elven son (who is growing up normally as unlike him his mother's formative years was spent within the Feywild where time doesn't work like it does outside anyway!)
She eventually returns to that world as she doesn't want her son ending up like her and rebuilds her life assuming a new identity as Vall the Herbalist.
Her son grows up and leaves home to join the military eventually mustering out and settling down to marry and raise a family of his own.
His mother now more firmly engrossed with her clerical duties is building her business which has blossomed because of her access to the Feywild however limited in scope she is able to regain her confidence after the failure of her marriage and her ex's new wife's family tried to kill both of them because they didn't believe she was perfectly happy to divorce her idiot of a husband.
She is almost 136 when her son sends for her and she attends his marriage and remains to witness the birth of her grandson as she manages to persuade her ex to fulfil the divorce his new wife's family threw a fit over.
She helps a Dawnfather acolyte leave the order joining the Everlight shrine after she's harassed by one of the Dawnfather Cleric's.
When her friend and her husband are ambushed and killed she helps her son become the mentor of her late friend's son the soon to be Paladin Gabriel Flynn.
When my campaign opened Vall was only 2nd level because the game I ran her in started off with her at 2nd had it been first level I would have done the same in the campaign I started but in both she was 148 years old and had just witnessed her son killed in front of her twice and tried to thwart her son's killers ending up being banished to another world because she was born in the Feywild.
I suspect anybody else can do a similar story for their character although I know of one who tried to manipulate his character's downtime to explain all the remarkable new gear he would then possess despite it not being part of the regular game when we ran that campaign must be 15 to 20 years ago...
Sorry for the longwinded prose the above reply got me thinking and that's always a potential problem!

 

[Asisreo]

I mean, they're adventuring for the same cumulative amount of time, right?

No matter how long I live, if I never spent a day actually adventuring then I would have the same experience as another fully grown adult that's new to adventuring, age irregardless.

The problem is when the players want to make level 1 expert adventurers/assassins/mercenaries. Level 1 is the coming up or origin story. If you're an assassin or a thief, you're a new one. If you're a magic caster, you're not even as proficient as a local priest let alone a proper mage.

If you want to roleplay someone with experience under their belt, you'll need to have, well, experience in your sheet as well. Meaning you want to be roughly level 5-10 as a starting point.

 

[hopeless]

That's not entirely accurate.
Back under the red box the first level Fighter was called a Veteran.
From my view your class is where you arrive when you start play, your background is how you end up there with your back story filling in the gaps as you get there.
There was a time in 3rd edition they had npc classes now in 5e we have sidekicks me personally I just have npc's at half the level of the PC's unless they're not companions.

So she was exiled at birth and grew up to experience a failed marriage before rebuilding her life.
A message from her son was how she ended up having she to be rescued by the other player characters, and thus felt obligated to help them in return.

Then the DM screwed that up by presenting the absolutely most perfect starting place for his campaign and then utterly botched it by claiming it wasn't relevant.
Sigh its going to take me a long time to get over that!

Oh right Wood Elf Knowledge Domain Cleric with a modified Outlander background which used the personality quirks of the Far Traveller (well Feywild after all!) and swapped the Herbalist kit for the musical instrument as she's a Herbalist.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's not entirely accurate.
Back under the red box the first level Fighter was called a Veteran.
From my view your class is where you arrive when you start play, your background is how you end up there with your back story filling in the gaps as you get there.
There was a time in 3rd edition they had npc classes now in 5e we have sidekicks me personally I just have npc's at half the level of the PC's unless they're not companions.

For example my wood elf cleric was exiled at birth for being born malformed during her tribe's flight from a dragon attack via the Feywild.
Usually Feyborn are a miraculous event but she was born with horrific disfigurements as far as a wood elf is concerned after all giving birth to what looks like a perfectly normal and very plain looking human child can be quite horrifying to an elf.
They wanted to abandon her, one of her grandparents refused but had to flee with her as the rest of the tribe wanted the child dead as they blamed her for their predicament.
He barely escaped but only with the aid of a Lantern Archon that dwelled within an abandoned Temple within the Feywild.
The tribe wouldn't leave this alone cursing the pair so they couldn't leave the temple grounds within the Feywild leaving only a portal within the temple which led to the Shadowfell and inevitable death for the pair.
Unknown to them there was another leading to a Prime Material World and eventually when that child grew old enough she ventured into that world settling down and marrying before the end of that marriage caused to her to flee back into her "Refuge" with her 6 year old half elven son from those that wanted her gone so her husband could marry a member of their house.
Eventually she returned to that world but was careful to use an alias as her son grew up and began living his own life this led to him getting married and starting a family of his own.
He sent a message to her so she could attend his wedding and she stayed and witnessed the birth of her grandson.
But then one dreadful day both her son and his wife died in an event that sparked a coup by an evil cult that tried to use a ritual to swap the kingdom with its double in the Shadowfell.
Using a ceremony she mastered allowing her to dedicate shrines to her patron deity and in so doing opening a gateway to her "Refuge" she used this in an effort to block the ritual honestly believing she had no chance of success with the most charitable outcome was opening a way from the Shadowfell back into the world they were being cast out from.
An old foe noticing her action promptly interrupted the ritual banishing her and as a result her Refuge was untethered from this world she had grown up with and eventually re-attached to another Prime Material World where still suffering from temporary amnesia she staggered outside thinking she had just been summoned by her son asking for her help.

And that covers her 148 years of life and why she was only 2nd level when that game started.
Originally it should have been even simpler but my DM made the mistake of involving my character's backstory in his introductory adventure and then stated it wasn't important.
Looking back I really should have walked back then, but I thought he made a honest albeit bloody idiotic mistake but that was before I recognized his obsession with Critical Role.

Sorry but its easy to explain that history and make it look impressive even if it should have been phrased as having been exiled at birth and growing up to experience a failed marriage she was answering a call for aid from her son when she had to be rescued by the other player characters. And thus felt obligated to help them in return.

Then the DM screwed that up by presenting the absolutely most perfect starting place for his campaign and then utterly botched it by claiming ti wasn't relevant.
Sigh its going to take me a long time to get over that!

That reads more like an autobiography for the main character of an epic tale. How many different characters are covered by that "backstory"?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Funny. My dm likes us to have backstories! He might say “this town could be here” or let’s say this person was actually your uncle instead of a tutor....or whatever.

then we just play.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It hand waves, it's easy, and in my opinion it's also incredibly stupid.

Other people feel otherwise and that's great for them. They do them and I do me.

I’m sure there’s a better way to express this than saying someone’s method is “stupid”. If not, perhaps it shouldn’t be said.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

OK, but given as 5e doesn't have mechanics of any kind for level loss (unlike 1e where explaining this would be simple: the fey could drain levels like a Vampire) how do you mechanically explain the loss of levels and abilities over those 100 years in a manner consistent with everything else in the setting? It can't have been due to 1e-style level draining; 5e flat-out doesn't have that, so it had to have been some sort of time-based thing...which also doesn't exist in 5e but is probably easier to bolt on than 1e-style level drain would be.

Genuinely curious, as I've been toying with designing (as yet unsuccessfully) mechanics for slowly losing levels due to sheer time and lack of practice.

Seems like an awfully risky way to get some art inspiration. Put another way, once you've got the inspiration it kinda helps if you're still alive to make use of it.

You don’t need any mechanics. It’s a story. I reskinned levelling to to slowly remembering his past.

If you want mechanics do this:

“There’s a guy who owns a bar. He was once a famous adventurer who was a renown, 20th level fighter. He slayed a red dragon with a vorpal sword and the head is mounted over the bar. That was 35 years ago. He’s now a 5th level fighter with a belt of Giant Strength and a vorpal sword.”

For the painter idea, it’s as good a backstory as any other. Players come up with stupid reasons to adventure all the time. If “I have wanderlust” is a good enough reason to adventure thn, “I’m bored and crave inspiration” is just as good. Why not be a famous painter? Take the entertainer or artisan background and take proficiency in painting tools. Done. Or reskin the Folk Hero background or the Noble background.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess my question is: Why WOULDNT you want your players to help you worldbuild?

In my case it's largely because most of my worldbuilding happens before I even know who the players are going to be. I get the setting more or less built, and once it's done - or done enough to be playable, anyway - I start inviting people to play in it.

 

[auburn2]

It's trivially easy to justify that humans, driven to adventure, just spend that much more percentage of their lives adventuring (ie gaining levels) than dwarves or elves (even those driven to adventure). So a 30 year old human adventurer can be the same level as a 180 year old dwarf or a 300 year old elf. Sure the elf and dwarf have lived longer, but they spent a larger % of their life doing other stuff.

Sure it's a hand waive, but it works AND it also puts some nice differences in (so elves aren't just pointy eared humans).

I think few Dwarves and Elves spend 100+ years adventuring in a typical D&D setting. They start around 50 and 100 respectively, but are probably either retired, or more likely dead (of unatural causes) by 100 and 150 respectively.

Just like an 70 year old human is likely retired or dead.