D&D General The D&D Multiverse: Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die

[Snarf Zagyg]

I still remember the first time I saw my friend's kid watching someone on YouTube play video games. It wasn't a review of the game or anything like that, he was literally watching someone else play a video game. I was baffled but I accepted that I just don't get it. Today's kids were raised on different works of fiction than I was and I'm comfortable with them liking different things. Heck, sometimes I even like the new stuff.

I agree.

People have different preferences, and the yung 'uns are gonna do what they are gonna do!

And that includes watching other people play video games. Which they will do, while I will sit, silently, judging them and thinking that they are in a cauldron of wrongness, steeped in a broth of "You gotta be kidding me."

 

[Staffan]

I still remember the first time I saw my friend's kid watching someone on YouTube play video games. It wasn't a review of the game or anything like that, he was literally watching someone else play a video game. I was baffled but I accepted that I just don't get it. Today's kids were raised on different works of fiction than I was and I'm comfortable with them liking different things. Heck, sometimes I even like the new stuff.

I mean, some people like watching a bunch of adults kicking a ball around a field of grass. I'm told some of them even pay large amounts of money to be able to watch that live, and consider the results of said ball-kicking to be very important to their lives.

 

[haakon1]

Different but I wouldn’t say very different.

I was very disappointed by 2e.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Has the 5E concept of the First World (first introduced in Fizban's) come up in the thread yet? It seems particularly applicable, what with powerful dragons in particular having linked "echoes" of themselves in multiple Material Plane Worlds, as well as portals in their lairs to other worlds.

 

[TiQuinn]

I was very disappointed by 2e.

It and 5e are my two favorite editions

 

[Zeromaru X]

Plane. The Pharisee - evil elves of Caer Sidi.

I'm sorry I get to notice the tangential details of the post, but... They named a group of evil elves "the Pharisee"? Really?

 

[Clint_L]

I still remember the first time I saw my friend's kid watching someone on YouTube play video games. It wasn't a review of the game or anything like that, he was literally watching someone else play a video game. I was baffled but I accepted that I just don't get it.

I totally get it. When I was a kid we would hang out at the arcade even when we had no money, and loved watching someone who was really good kick butt at a game. Was that only a Nanaimo thing? Come on, Gen X nerds - you were never mesmerized watching the local champ dominate some game at your local arcade or 7-11 or whatever? Like, there are movies about arcade champs being treated like local rock stars.

It doesn't interest me that much anymore, but I've realized that I am old. It's not them, it's me. Teenagers gonna teenage.

 

[Zeromaru X]

In short, while I think that overall 5e has done an amazing job of incorporating numerous diverse cultural cues and viewpoints, the one thing it is not so great at is allowing the "weird" exception. Something which has long been baked into D&D's DNA.

Well, finished your post. I just want to say that I don't think it is fair to say 5e took away the "weird" out of D&D. This is something that was there before 5e was a thing. It was there even before 4e was a thing. I remember how mad the people in my gaming circle were when I proposed to add firearms to our game (I was all hyped with the 4e version of Zeitgeist back at the time). So, it's something that 5e (and 4e) inherited from its earlier precursors.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, finished your post. I just want to say that I don't think it is fair to say 5e took away the "weird" out of D&D. This is something that was there before 5e was a thing. It was there even before 4e was a thing. I remember how mad the people in my gaming circle were when I proposed to add firearms to our game (I was all hyped with the 4e version of Zeitgeist back at the time). So, it's something that 5e (and 4e) inherited from its earlier precursors.

If we had to date, my guess is that the decline of “weird” coincides with the Hickman revolution and a shift to a focus on more coherent, less “game-able” worldbuilding.

Even the “weird” 2e settings of Planescape and Spelljammer tried to present the weirdness as a logical extrapolation of basic principles.

 

[Voadam]

If we had to date, my guess is that the decline of “weird” coincides with the Hickman revolution and a shift to a focus on more coherent, less “game-able” worldbuilding.

Even the “weird” 2e settings of Planescape and Spelljammer tried to present the weirdness as a logical extrapolation of basic principles.

Maybe, but Dragonlance had time travel and gnome flinging catapults and such which are pretty gonzo. Even the late 1e Dragonlance adventures has things like the gods being interlopers from elsewhere.

I agree 2e does have a lot of low weirdness/fairly mundane grounded tone from the PH on though.