D&D General Self-Defeating Rules in D&D

[DrunkonDuty]

Didn’t care for it actually - it was too obvious for my taste. Prefer Pythons to Brooks.

I love them both. I can't imagine my life without having watched the hell out of all their movies.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh, and DnD lightsources: as far back as 1E we had helmets with little continual light rocks mounted in mirrored cones.

Also continual light street lamps everywhere.

 

[loverdrive]

Re: aesthetics

Torches, just like ancient tombs full of traps, aren't aesthetics of fantasy. Corum Jhaslen Irsei didn't muck around forgotten tombs with a torch in his hand, looking out for pressure plates.

You know who did? Indiana Jones. Lara Croft. Nathan Drake. Torches and dungeons aren't about a fantasy world, they are about exploration!

 

[Merlecory]

I agree - but that's because it rarely comes up in things like Critical Role or BG3 or even discussions of D&D

Re: Darkness

I think some of this could be ascribed to the medium being used. Most video games (horror being the chief counter-example) can't really use darkness because then the player can't see the game they are playing*. Same reason you don't see darkness (heh) used much in (non-horror) movies.

As I recall, the novelisation of The Princess Bride had Inigo and Fezzik descend into the zoo of death in complete darkness. Because books are word driven experiences, this works out fine. This scene doesn't exist in the movies, because no one could see.

This is perhaps a round about way of saying the medium of TTRPGs might be more capable of including darkness than other forms of media, they might not be a good touch point.

*Deep Rock Galactic does include light as a semi-important mechanic, and I have found it to cause some incredibly fun and emergent game play because of it. While each dwarf does get recharging flairs (and the scout gets a flair gun), there is always some low level concern about when you should use flairs, and enemies can close the distance when you are too conservative, or if you had over used them in a large cave system. I think that DRG benefits from those tense moments, and D&D could too.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

FYI

Hollywood Torches - TV Tropes

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Re: aesthetics

Torches, just like ancient tombs full of traps, aren't aesthetics of fantasy. Corum Jhaslen Irsei didn't muck around forgotten tombs with a torch in his hand, looking out for pressure plates.

You know who did? Indiana Jones. Lara Croft. Nathan Drake. Torches and dungeons aren't about a fantasy world, they are about exploration!

Careful--you might remind folks (or reveal to them) that the roots of D&D are actually extremely, extremely close to superhero comics.

Because y'know who else used torches? "Doc" Savage. AKA one of the single most foundational works....for superhero comics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

FYI

Hollywood Torches - TV Tropes

Just remember folks: Realism. Verisimilitude. Accuracy to real-world materials, physics, and phenomena. That's what D&D is all about! We'd never allow conveniences just for gameplay purposes. We'd never do things because they're narratively exciting. The one and only reason mechanics exist the way they do is to make a world that works exactly like the world we live in, but with magic in it--and every time you find something that fails to be that way, it must be immediately earmarked for correction. Anything mundane must always work as close as possible to real, physical mundanity.

If it weren't obvious, I'm being extremely facetious here. Torches and light are phenomenally unrealistic, and always have been. Rope, and really the vast majority of tools and equipment other than the polearms that Gygax had a fetish about, likewise. Many weapons and armors are ridiculously over-heavy for their materials--to the point that mithril, far from being a ridiculous implausible fantasy material, is actually comparable to real steel when it should be far, far better. (Tolkien would be rolling in his grave!)

Because it made for better gameplay to have a significant portion of your weight capacity--AKA your experience-gaining capacity--eaten up by your equipment. And we now zealously, even fanatically, preserve that gameplay contrivance even when its actual gameplay value is gone....and it adds no narrative value...and it is actually out of step with verisimilitude, realism, or what-have-you. The one and only thing it is "simulating" is itself! But we don't hear critics going after that, now do we?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Careful--you might remind folks (or reveal to them) that the roots of D&D are actually extremely, extremely close to superhero comics.

Because y'know who else used torches? "Doc" Savage. AKA one of the single most foundational works....for superhero comics.

Not to mention Indiana Jones and his imitators.

 

[Pamphylian]

Because it made for better gameplay to have a significant portion of your weight capacity--AKA your experience-gaining capacity--eaten up by your equipment. And we now zealously, even fanatically, preserve that gameplay contrivance even when its actual gameplay value is gone....and it adds no narrative value...and it is actually out of step with verisimilitude, realism, or what-have-you. The one and only thing it is "simulating" is itself! But we don't hear critics going after that, now do we?

In my experience, these gameplay contrivances can contribute gameplay value, narrative value, and verisimilitude when done well! The former two because imo the essence of both gameplay and narrative in an rpg is player choice and the feed back of tension and consequence, and these contrivances provide tools in the tool box for the DM and the players in this regard. Not things always in effect, but there for when the situation calls for it. The latter because verisimilitude is not just a function of our reality, but also of our fiction - when you have a sense of the "rules"/physics of how something works in a fictional setting, even if they don't completely align with our reality, players and DMs can make judgements about how something will play out even if the scenario is not fully specified by the written rules. Obviously, these things will not spark joy for everyone, but I think the cost of including them and doing them well, in terms of effort and in terms of impact on the non-joy-sparked, is pretty low.

Not to mention Indiana Jones and his imitators.

Absolutely (I've brought up Indiana Jones a few times in this thread). D&D historically and I think even today for many tables has as much Indiana Jones (and related adventure) as say, Tolkien, intentionally or by convergent evolution. Something like taking the golden idol from the pedestal or sneaking around the evil cult base or chasing a chain convoluted "archaeological" clues to a maguffin also sought by rivals happen extremely frequently at my table. D&D has had, and should have imo, a quite broad inspirational base.

 

[Pamphylian]

*Deep Rock Galactic does include light as a semi-important mechanic, and I have found it to cause some incredibly fun and emergent game play because of it. While each dwarf does get recharging flairs (and the scout gets a flair gun), there is always some low level concern about when you should use flairs, and enemies can close the distance when you are too conservative, or if you had over used them in a large cave system. I think that DRG benefits from those tense moments, and D&D could too.

Doom 3 and it's flashlight also comes to mind. I think it had both fans and detractors. I fully agree, D&D can benefit from these tense moments. It doesn't need to in every table, every stuation, or every level of play, but it benefits from having them as part of the possible game space.