D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[DrJawaPhD]

How did the 5e vs 5.5e thread somehow randomly morph into the "Circus Troupe" thread about Setting Lore?

 

[Nightfly]

I generally won't allow warforged into the games I run (unless I'm actually running Eberron, obviously). I just really dislike having androids (or the like) in my classic fantasy. No firearms, either. That can all work for a particular kind of setting, but not for a Forgotten Realms style campaign, at least not for me. Does that make me a bad DM? No. It's all my other failings that make me a bad DM.

Tortles? Blech. I ain't down with your comic mutant teenage B.S. Take your kitanas and pizzas and get off my lawn, son.

 

[mamba]

We're not talking some exotic foreign race from another franchise, we're talking tortles, a legacy D&D race from 1986.

eh, they are still exotic and did not show up in almost anything until the Tortle Package for 5e. Just because a bad idea is old does not suddenly mean it is not a bad idea, calling it ‘legacy’ does not change that.

Can you find a place for them if you want to, sure, doesn’t mean you have to.

 

[GobHag]

How did the 5e vs 5.5e thread somehow randomly morph into the "Circus Troupe" thread about Setting Lore?

A similar thing happen that share Keith's feelings on; Detractors believe that 5e was already toeing the line at first but 5.5e had taken a step too far. With a further deprioritization of setting and verisimilitude for [Player Fantasy/Game Balance], which aren't truly opposing but the overlap in the Venn diagram isn't as big as one would hope these days.

 

[Mecheon]

How did the 5e vs 5.5e thread somehow randomly morph into the "Circus Troupe" thread about Setting Lore?

Frankly I think its due to the claim they made that 5.24e is somehow more 'wild high fantasy'. Frankly, I disagree with the assessment and contend that D&D's always been high fantasy. That D&D has been, historically, an awful game of choice if you want something low fantasy, the fact two of the base races everyone's going to have in elves and dwarves are as high fantasy as it gets kind of shows that, let alone the wizard and cleric's existences. Low fantasy settings don't release books called "Tall Tales of the Wee Folk" that have rules on how to play everything from brownies to giant owls to selectively invisible pooka to shapeshifting dragons.

Races like tortles and the like delve into it because they're on the more high fantasy side

eh, they are still exotic and did not show up in almost anything until the Tortle Package for 5e. Just because a bad idea is old does not suddenly mean it is not a bad idea, calling it ‘legacy’ does not change that.

Can you find a place for them if you want to, sure, doesn’t mean you have to.

They're turtle guys. They're not exotic, especially given other D&D races like the ever loved flumphs or even just rust monsters. And they were one of the big starring races back in the Red Steel set for Mystara. I also wouldn't call them a bad idea, turtle people are easy anthropomorphic animals

Settings that are looser so you can go "Yeah I like the sound of this stuff from Al-qadim, I'll borrow some of it" or "Y'know what that sounds like a neat place, let's just put it here so the character can feel more connected to the world" generally going to help people feel more immersed in things and help the DM by letting them just bust open a 'here's a neat place' sourcebook and go "Yeah that's a place they can go to now"

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Frankly I think its due to the claim they made that 5.24e is somehow more 'wild high fantasy'. Frankly, I disagree with the assessment and contend that D&D's always been high fantasy. That D&D has been, historically, an awful game of choice if you want something low fantasy, the fact two of the base races everyone's going to have in elves and dwarves are as high fantasy as it gets kind of shows that, let alone the wizard and cleric's existences. Low fantasy settings don't release books called "Tall Tales of the Wee Folk" that have rules on how to play everything from brownies to giant owls to selectively invisible pooka to shapeshifting dragons.

But in prior editions you could in fact construct more realistic or low fantasy settings by simply choosing from the best resources and limiting players to appropriate choices, and not feel like you were excising 80% of the game in the process; even if the base assumptions of D&D weren't favorable to low fantasy, the systems and their endless splatbooks provided plenty of support for any sort of game you could imagine, and the OGL turbo charged that. This was quite doable in 1E, 2E and even 3E, and only really went away as a viable option with the arrival of 4E.

 

[tetrasodium]

How detailed are things

It doesn't matter. It was mentioned previously that the official setting in question that the particular player i mentioned was trying to totally rewrite in question was eberron. The easy context free example you just quoted used player trying to bring StarWars Jedi into a star trek game. This shouldn't be question that needs answering but I've also needed to say no that doesn't fit the setting with Ravenloft darksun and Thay games.

that you can't just fit "Here's Tortuga. Its off the coast. Tortles live there, also probably pirates" into some corner? Frankly I'd argue if a world is so densely populated that you can't just let a player go "Yeah sure there's a tiny village up that way you can come from", then the world is too written and isn't serving its purpose. There's a reason Greyhawk just started as a single map and let the DM do whatever they wanted elsewhere

We're not talking some exotic foreign race from another franchise, we're talking tortles, a legacy D&D race from 1986.

YES tortuga is going to be a problem sometimes:

darksun doesn't have islands or costs and I don't have any interest in constantly figuring out where tortles fit into darksun if I'm running a darksun game where there are already things going on. That is an especially important and inflexible because the players wanting such a thing has already demonstrates that they have zero willingness to engage with the setting as much as would be needed to simply have their character fit the setting rather than call for the setting to be modified for them.

Similar problems can exist if I'm running a Ravenloft Thay eberron or any other setting game and the critical problem is that the player's character is already being a disruption without even having been created yet. I gave you an example with Star wars and star trek to avoid just this sort of endlessly more specific edge case whataboutism devste... Luke Skywalker does not belong in the star ship enterprise and it doesn't matter how easy it would be for the gm to figure out an excuse that fits because the conflicts are only going to grow more problematic to deal with over time as the campaign progresses

 

[tetrasodium]

How did the 5e vs 5.5e thread somehow randomly morph into the "Circus Troupe" thread about Setting Lore?

Id say that by going higher fantasy higher power even more superheroic fantasy than the other way around that 5.0024 further emboldens players with a desire to go too far instead of fitting a setting when they sit down ready to channel wotc's decade of toxic "Tell Your Story" Mary Sue generating messaging in a setting that's not super high very bright super heroic fantasy.

 

[mamba]

They're turtle guys.

I know

They're not exotic, especially given other D&D races like the ever loved flumphs or even just rust monsters.

Rust monsters and flumphs are not playable species.

Tortles are exotic in the sense that they are rarely being played, just because they apparently were invented in 1986 does not change that. Elves and dwarves are not exotic, tortles are.

A setting / table not having eg elves is rare, pretty sure a setting / table not having tortles is the norm

And they were one of the big starring races back in the Red Steel set for Mystara.

oh, the setting that apparently sold less than 20k copies? You are making my case for me

 

[Minigiant]

I think this is critical strain between gameplay mechanics and setting aesthetics that many struggle with.

The truth is low power fantasy doesn't allow for many mechanical PC archetypes without heavy and complex mechanical complex.

Both low quantity mechanical PC archetypes and very complex mechanical complex are poor book sellers.