D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

Well, gospel is hyperbole. I’m just saying that, until told otherwise, when someone talks about D&D, I’m gonna assume the races and classes that appear in the PHB. And plenty of others do, too.

You are welcome to make that assumption, but I do not and will not. Not sure why you think bringing in hypothetical people who agree with you is supposed to make argument stronger.

 

[Lanefan]

I stand to be corrected (@Lanefan) but Lanefan may prefer a lower crit count because they do not use 1e/2e's system for hit point generation and far less healing is available all round, also their game likely employs a slower natural healing from those earlier editions.

We use the 1e hit point system modified by the one-time addition of betwwn (usually) 2-5 "body points". Healing is relatively easily available except at very low level, and our natural healing is better than RAW 1e but still nowhere near as generous as the 4e-5e rules.

The preference for a lower crit count comes in part from the idea that crits are, among other things, somewhat intended to model one-shot kills by either good luck or good striking, and to have them as frequent as 5e does would lead to an even higher body count that I already have.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My take on it is that building a setting for play is something different than building a setting to tell stories in a more traditional authorial sense. I think many DMs mistake the second for the first, or don’t really make the distinction to begin with.

Yet many setting that originated in novel or films have been successfully used in gaming. Though I actually agree with you somewhat. There are different considerations, I just don't think these lead to game world needing to be "anything goes." It just means it needs to be intractable and able to support variety of stories.

Well, it’s also what’s in the books. There’s certainly things that are implicit in a game of D&D until shown otherwise.

Like, until someone says “this game will take place on Athas” or similar, things like gnomes and monks and the like would be expected, whereas Jedi and Klingons and Autobots would not.

But the pitch will contain "the otherwise."

But that could all be changed very simply if you wanted. You could just say “on this world, Drow are not all evil… they are like any other racial group and run the gamut alignment-wise”. Easy.

One could do that. And personally I prefer that. But I see no reason for @Lanefan to sacrifice their artistic vision just because you or me would have created the setting differently.

That sounds like about 10 minutes worth of work.

I mean, if you remove the fiendish association from the tieflings, what's even the point?

 

[hawkeyefan]

You are welcome to make that assumption, but I do not and will not. Not sure why you think bringing in hypothetical people who agree with you is supposed to make argument stronger.

Because my only point is that it’s not an uncommon expectation that the things in the PHB will be available to play.

You’ve stated your stance. Cool. I’m not arguing what your stance may or may not be.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yet many setting that originated in novel or films have been successfully used in gaming. Though I actually agree with you somewhat. There are different considerations, I just don't think these lead to game world needing to be "anything goes." It just means it needs to be intractable and able to support variety of stories.

Sure, some settings used for telling stories in novels/film/comics/etc. work fine for RPGs. I’m not saying there can’t be some overlap. What I’m saying is that, when you are creating a setting for play (or adapting a ln existing setting for play) there are different considerations. Or there should be, in my opinion.

But the pitch will contain "the otherwise."

It may or it may not. Ideally, it would. Or, ideally, perhaps the pitch would not present a finished setting, but instead one to which the players could contribute.

One could do that. And personally I prefer that. But I see no reason for @Lanefan to sacrifice their artistic vision just because you or me would have created the setting differently.

Because he didn’t cite artistic vision as a factor. He said the problem with Drow was that they’d often be killed on sight. That must be because of one or two reasons; 1) that’s the established lore if his setting, which is his choice, or 2) that’s the generic D&D lore circa about 1983 or so.

Those are decisions he has made or allowed to persist. All it would take to change that is him saying “not all drow are evil”.

If it’s a matter of artistic expression, then I’d have to hear the arguments about how denying drow as PCs and/or making them all evil actually serves play. My guess is “not all that much”, but I’m sure I could be wrong and there’s some super compelling reason to deny drow PCs.

I mean, if you remove the fiendish association from the tieflings, what's even the point?

Even if you remove that stuff… which I agree is a big part of the aesthetic of tieflings… they still have a demonic look to them, so they may still struggle with being judged by their appearance… which is a pretty standard theme that a lot of players may enjoy examining. The actual demonic heritage bit just adds the “of two worlds, but belonging to neither” element in addition to the appearance angle.

 

[Lanefan]

And I find both very unlikely? Where did @Lanefan explicitely state they wouldn't have an adult conversation with the player to unearth why they were interested in playing a dragonborn, before needing to assess if they were going to accept or reject it? It seem like you are inserting the assumption they wouldn't? If I were forced to make a guess I would lean much more toward the intepretation that they would indeed have this discussion.

So if we indeed assume my most likely intepretation, the fact that Lanefan find themselves needing to make a judgement call sort of implies to me that there must have been some sort of insistence going on at the player's part.

I make it quite clear right up front that the PC-playable species will be the core seven from 1e (with a de-emphasis on Gnomes) and if you want something else there's a tiny chance you might get it through some long-odds dice rolling but you're bound by the roll results and are likely to end up with nothing special at all.

After that, if someone remains intent on playing something exotic I'll ask why. IME it's usually been for power reasons, which get no traction with me.

Once or twice it's been for legitimate flavour reasons but power is still lurking as well. Example: during the "Twilight" heyday I had a player lobby me for ages wanting to play a Vampire. She had all kinds of good ideas as to flavour and so forth but there was no getting around the fact that a Vampire (already a known thing in the game) in the then-current party would have been stupidly overpowered, never mind it could have threatened the loss of some levels on anyone who disagreed with it, and so I declined. Many times.

And the more insistent the player gets the more likely I am to stop listening.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It may or it may not. Ideally, it would. Or, ideally, perhaps the pitch would not present a finished setting, but instead one to which the players could contribute.

Ideally for whom? Not for me. I love world building as a GM, and I don't particularly feel I need help with it, but as player I like exploring what someone else has created. I am not looking for helping the GM to do their job. Again, other approaches are perfectly valid, but not everyone needs to do collaborative world building.

Because he didn’t cite artistic vision as a factor. He said the problem with Drow was that they’d often be killed on sight. That must be because of one or two reasons; 1) that’s the established lore if his setting, which is his choice, or 2) that’s the generic D&D lore circa about 1983 or so.

Those are decisions he has made or allowed to persist. All it would take to change that is him saying “not all drow are evil”.

If it’s a matter of artistic expression, then I’d have to hear the arguments about how denying drow as PCs and/or making them all evil actually serves play. My guess is “not all that much”, but I’m sure I could be wrong and there’s some super compelling reason to deny drow PCs.

Deciding to depict the drow in certain way, be it inspired by some old lore or not is an artistic choice. In this case not one I would make, but we all are different as creators, which is marvellous.

Even if you remove that stuff… which I agree is a big part of the aesthetic of tieflings… they still have a demonic look to them, so they may still struggle with being judged by their appearance… which is a pretty standard theme that a lot of players may enjoy examining. The actual demonic heritage bit just adds the “of two worlds, but belonging to neither” element in addition to the appearance angle.

Yes, but the outcast trope seems a bit lacklustre without the actual fiendish bit.

 

[bloodtide]

You....do realize that the fundamental nature of fiction, of any kind, IS that anything can be anything if you build it up to be so...?

That's the beautiful thing about our hobby. We can speak of whatever we wish to.

True in general, but meaningless otherwise.

No, see, here you've erred. You have conflated "nothing has an inherent nature in fiction" with "so everything is 100% pure randomness."

The two are absolutely not the same. Remember, before Tolkien, "elf" meant things like Keeblers. Now it means gorgeous, elegant relics of a better time wasting away before they sail off to Heaven.

This is the point though. You can't just say something at random is an elf, and then change it on a whim. An "Elf" has to be a fairly specific thing in general.....or it is not an elf.

I mean, it depends. Did they actually build up to that? Did we, for example, see some horrible mutated chickens lying dead beforehand? Did we see shattered, oversized eggs that smelled of smoke and sulfur? Did we have a chance to find out what was involved?

If the answer to at least most of those questions is "yes", then yeah, I might actually find that highly creative and interesting. It invites a great many questions. It also invites some humorous jabs based on Diogenes' famous criticism of Plato's Academy by throwing down a plucked chicken in the middle of the school and declaring, "Behold, a man!" because the Academy had defined "a man" to mean "a featherless biped".

As always you want the DM to jump through all sorts of hoops to make the players happy. So...where are all the hoops for players? They would have to do the same thing, right?

Nah. "Tiefling" has been many things over the years, and the specific part of it that is essential to any given fan doesn't need to be the same as the specific part essential to a different fan. That's the nature of being a fan of some kind of fiction. Different people get different things out of it. It's good, and healthy, that D&D provide an experience where that can happen--it means it embraces a wide variety of players, who can then organize amongst themselves to find copacetic groups.

Odd you see everything as so fluid...again the everything is anything. It makes it all pointless.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, but it's only weird if you're working under the assumption that the game is meant to be a toolkit, and there aren't any standard setting assumptions underlying them.

For 5e, my assumption is that the game will run in a setting that fits within the broader "D&D multiverse". And that playing an elf bladesinger wizard or a dragonborn monk will have a default expectation of being allowed. Just like I would expect to be able to play a Brujah in any V:tM game, or a goblin druid in any Daggerheart game. I would expect that I would almost certainly have to tweak details to fit the game and the other PCs (which is why I'm strongly against 20 page backstories), but not just be unable to play a core concept.

Depends on one's approach.

Going in under the idea for species and classes that "it's not allowed until-unless the DM says it is" makes things IMO far easier than starting with "it's allowed until-unless the DM says it isn't".

How does it make things easier? Simple - it means not thinking about character concepts until AFTER you've seen the setting write-up* and are thus aware of any limitations as to what is and isn't going to exist in this particular game.

* - it's obviously incumbent on the DM to have said setting write-up completed before, and player-visible at, session 0 or roll-up night, whichever comes first.

 

[clearstream]

Yes but it’s more than that as any mechanic that allows authoring can be viewed as doing what you describe.

There’s the real world, the fictional world and the map of meaning between them. Straight authoring is one method to produce fiction. Simulative mechanics based on a map of meaning between the goings on in the real world and the fictional world is another way. I’m even a bit hesitant to call simulative mechanics authoring at all as they are such different things.

I'd like to propose a couple of ways to look at game mechanics.

One way is to deconstruct the mechanic picturing that each element is 'attached' to something in the imagined world. Processing the mechanic could then be pictured to track with diegetic objects and events. It is easy to overlook the incompleteness of this sort of model: there are vastly many possible objects and events even if limited to the neighbourhood of those players find interesting. It's possible some posters have this sort of mechanic in mind.

RQ combat attempts this sort of arrangement. Each creature has an attached hit location table. What characters are carrying (their encumbrance) is attached to modifiers to things like dodging. Even strike ranks are attached to weapons and actions. But no one should picture that just because statement of intent and movement of non-engaged characters are processed before resolution of melee, missiles and spells, that's how combat plays out in the world.​

Another way is to picture the mechanic to be prompting and structuring authoring by players in conformance with how the world is imagined to be. The mechanic accepts inputs such as the results of prior processes, fictional positions, and player declarations into procedures that output suitable prompts. Players complete the mechanic by imagining what follows in world from the prompt.

D&D ability checks follow this sort of arrangement. Fictional position, character abilities, player declarations are all input into a dice procedure that outputs whether to narrate in line with what players hoped, or with how things are diverted (a locked door, say) or go wrong (rolling 5 or more and falling, say). But no one should picture that just because the output has a simple format, what's happening in world has a simple format. (Or perhaps they do, and then can't see how this sort of mechanic succeeds.)​

​

Neither of those examples are aiming to prompt and structure narration in conformance with the precepts of Western dramatic tradition, even if they could be used that way. They're largely focused on what to picture in world... even if they use different approaches to getting there. One could say they're focused on obstacles along the hero's journey, for some styles of play.