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

[clearstream]

Couldn't resist...

Assuming average values for chest 4's jewelry of 3500 each and assuming the base value variances on the gems cancel out, there's 233,655 g.p. there in coin, gems, and jewelry alone.

The dust of disappearance, the potions, the scrolls, and the talisman all come on top of that. Oh, and the satin-lined ivory box which, though not given a value here, is probably worth a bit once the poison is washed off.

Agreed. That's what I meant in approximating the total value to be "Something over a quarter million worth in gold pieces." And the contact poison on the satin-lined ivory box alone hints at drow predelictions.

That's in contrast to an unembellished 1,000,000gp that is proposed to enhance appreciation of what drow are like in D&D.

 

[clearstream]

This thread needs YOU to intractably disagree...


...if it is to make 2000 pages. I've done my part, have you?!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This thread needs YOU to intractably disagree...

No it doesn't.

 

[Emerikol]

Okay.

Do you think most players would view it that way? That if you were introducing this style to someone new, they would view it that way?

Imagine someone whose only exposure to D&D is seeing Honor Among Thieves and good episodes of an actual-play podcast (doesn't have to be Critical Role but that's the most likely one), so they're excited to play the "real thing". Would you expect them to take that attitude?

Because that--to me--is the crux here. Something SEVERAL people have used as a criticism of "narrative" games, both in this thread and elsewhere, is that they depend on the group already being highly aligned in terms of both what they want out of the experience, and what things they're expected to accept without comment. But now, with this argument, that seems to be no different for the "traditional GM" approach. That also requires the players to be highly aligned with what they want out of the experience, and even more about what things they're expected to accept without comment.

If you're relying on pre-existing understanding, if that's supposed to be something that generally applies--which the people who have upvoted you seem to be saying--then doesn't that rather weaken several of the arguments already made?

I didn't say that about narrative games. I do think DMs should be upfront during the recruitment stage. I like to put out something with all houserules and campaign details ahead of time. Everyone should do that I think.

NGL, this is--or at least really obviously reads like--you saying that the campaign can't actually matter to people like me. That's pretty insulting. Imagine if I had said something like "In games where the players really matter, enthusiasm is vitally important to the GM as well as to the players." I'd have you guys jumping down my throat--and rightly so. This is sorta what I mean about the "double standard" I've mentioned previously. Wrong things, even hurtful things, are totally okay...when they come from one specific side.

No. I am saying that a well detailed world done in advance by the DM is important to us. It cannot be important to a campaign where the players and DM generate the world as they go.

The campaign matters to me, immensely so. It matters to my players. They have, in fact, also praised me for how consistent and well-built it is, that it makes sense, that people have understandable motives and act on them in reasonable ways, that it has a cohesive concept and direction, that there have many times where they failed to connect the dots when they absolutely could have, and that cost them--and other times when they connected the dots better than I did, and thus it benefited them.

I get that you believe the end result of your game is a well detailed world. I was talking about stepping into a well detailed world. One where the players discover the world. They don't create it. And I know in your eyes that is a form of discovery so I concede that point but it is not the same as what I am talking about. I'm not saying for the entire gaming community that my way is the only way. I like my way and I am upfront with all the details. That is the point. In my games, until you have read the "prospectus" for the campaign you should have no assumptions about even the rules in their entirety let alone the races/classes.

But I haven't poured my heart and soul into really, frankly minor things like "this setting ABSOLUTELY CAN'T have gnomes" or whatever. I've put it into the themes of the campaign. Dragons are rare in the Tarrakhuna (as much a limitation on myself as on the campaign). Demons and Devils are powerful and dangerous--you don't mess with them without a good plan. Celestials...nobody knows for sure! (Well, the party does now, but originally they didn't.) Genies are the fantastical powerful species du jour. It's what I call a "chiaroscuro" world--like the painting technique, which emphasizes the few lighted, colorful things against pitch-dark shadows.. There are plenty of bright things. There are also dark shadows, and some pretty terrible stuff happens in them some of the time. Those shadows lengthen, deepen, intensify--and may snuff out the light, if no one works to maintain it. There may be assassin-cults and twisted abominations of ancient evil magic and the leftover detritus of a collapsed-and-fled genie empire built on the backs of mortal slaves. There may be horrible addictions and callous merchant-princes and tyrannical rulers. But there is hope--both in the form of heroes willing to step up to the plate to make a difference, and in the ordinary people who make those heroic acts possible, and who knit together the resulting aftermath into something that can stand the test of time (rather than being a flash in the pan, bound together only as long as a hero can hold it).

You are arguing for your approach as if to convince me it is fun. I'm sure you are having fun. I don't think you are lying about it. I believe you. I just like my approach for me.

That, to me, is what a "game where the campaign really matters" looks like. That's the deeply important structure getting the attention it deserves, as far as I'm concerned. I just flat-out don't understand why "you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT play gnomes" or "bards are FORBIDDEN" in any way contributes to the bones and muscles and organs of a setting. They're barely even skin-deep things. That doesn't mean they don't matter. But they're just...they're incredibly superficial as far as campaign-effort goes. To make such an ENORMOUS deal out of such superficial elements doesn't make sense to me. It's like obsessing over the font and kerning of a novel, as though that were of equal weight to the character-building or the editing.

Well this is the crux of it. All those things are important. In some settings, it just makes sense for there not to be gnomes. Or honestly the DM just wants a game with these five or three races and that is all. It doesn't matter. The debate we are having is about player expectations. I think until the DM has told them something about the campaign they should have very few expectations. I think a class or a race can ruin some settings.

To be honest, almost any player I've met that is that insistent on any race or class is someone I already think will not be a good fit for the campaign. It's almost worth it to me to restrict something just to weed those players out. They are far more interested in playing some generic D&D concept than they are playing something immersive to the campaign.

There is also the case where the race is modified greatly which could also cause conflict. I had a campaign where elves were psionic instead of magical. Where gunpowder was a secret of the dwarves and only a dwarf could use it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This thread needs YOU to intractably disagree...


...if it is to make 2000 pages. I've done my part, have you?!

You forgot the Would you like to know more?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As I posted upthread,
In addition, here are some of the relevant relations:

*The GM has announced a "strange runes" scene distinction: this makes the runes salient.​

​

*Reading the runes is obviously related to the runes being salient.​

​

*The runes being interesting is also related to the runes being salient.​

​

*Revealing a way out of the dungeon is one way for the runes to be interesting.​

There are relations between things that can matter in RPGing, that are not merely imagined causal and constitutive relations between imagined entities and events.

Yes, but those things are unrelated to the simulation! Furthermore, you are not merely combining odds of several things you are completely supplanting outcomes causally connected to the things the numbers being used to draw the odds measure, with those causally unconnected to them, as it seems that there is no possibility of on outcome where the character simply fails to read the runes.

You can use mechanics like you this, even though I find it a tad confused, but it is a game after all. But it is not a simulationistic mechanic then!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is why I’m suggesting you involve the players at the start, before things are set. So it’s not about adding a new race. Get their input so that you have consensus on your restrictions. These means that whatever curated list you come up with is one everyone is already aware of and has had a chance to offer input on.

I started designing my current setting Artra probably about a year before the game actually began. At that point I had no idea whether it would even end up as a campaign or who the players might be. And in case of @Lanefan they have a world they've originally designed decades ago, so it was obvious impossible to involve the current players into setting the initial parameters of the world then. Hell, some of them might not have even been born then!

And frankly, world building simply is sort of thing I really do not care to do collaboratively. It is sort of stuff I can do alone between campaigns and games. I rather use the time I have together with my friends actually playing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Notice how you ignored the extremely important argument based on the thing that an actual real-life author did. He actually did do the thing you're claiming we can't do--and, in specific, the thing that MADE "elf" mean what you now say it must ALWAYS mean.

If Tolkien can do it, and have it be good and right and proper, we can too. As the man himself wrote in Mythopoeia:
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.

Yes, you can absolutely do it, but then it is pointless to insist that playing "an elf" or "a dragonborn" without the context of what those words mean. Like the GM can say that sure you can play a dragonborn, there is the Dragonborn Clan of mountain dwarves, and then hand you the dwarf rules, but would this satisfy your desire to play a dragonborn?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Were I running 5e Drow might well be* kill-on-sight there too; as would demons, devils, jellies, oozes, githi, chromatic dragons, giants, and various other monsters.

* - almost certainly would be, actually, given that most of the other usual humanoid kill-on-sight options have been neutered into blandness.

Then you would be running 5e in a way specifically not intended, which contradicts the explicit text given to players. 5e made very extra explicit what had been a strong implication of 4e and a quiet whisper of 3e: sapient races that aren't monsters can't be 100% guaranteed Always Chaotic Evil (or whatever), and specifically with Drow, they're now explicitly understood to encompass a spectrum of cultures--some of which are devotees of Lolth (or other evil Drow deities), some of which are not (possibly devotees of good Drow deities, like Eilistraee, but possibly not having any special religious affiliation). More or less, it's saying that for established settings (such as FR, the implied setting of 5e), the Drow everyone is familiar with come from only a handful of cities in a particular region--with other regions having different cultures. More or less, it would be like if the only two nations of humans one were exposed to were Thay and the Zhentarim, and thus asserting that the entire human race must be KOS-level Pure Evil because of it.

Now, of course, you aren't beholden to what WotC decided to do with the game. But the fact is, Drow are explicitly an entirely playable race/species in both the 2014 PHB and 2014 PHB. Even if they weren't, the mechanical package doesn't change other than which "you can cast this once a day" extra spells (and otherwise-ordinary cantrip) you get, so for almost all rules purposes, a drow is just an elf with dark skin and slightly different bonus spells. Telling the player they can't play an Elf in general, Drow or not, would almost surely get some pushback.

And yes, part of it is Drizzt Do'Urden--but part of it is also just that genuinely sapient species/races are being treated as "it's more complex than that" now. Some of them, from particular factions, may be "show no mercy". But you can't just instantly see the color of an elf's skin and know "oh this is 100% an un-person I need to kill right away." For, I should hope, probably obvious reasons. (Social implications from demonizing a dark-skinned, matriarchal society that lives in a dangerous faraway place? Perish the thought!)

 

[TwoSix]

Well, to be pedantic about it, narration of weather is caused by the PCs sending their characters on a journey. I think we can all assume there's un-narrated weather happening in the setting the rest of the time, can't we?

I mean, we can assume every game (outside of some sci-fi and extraplanar settings) has weather happening as a background assumption.