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

[TwoSix]

Except for that one guy that we're talking about here. He hands you a half-elf.

"I am half-elf. Other half, also elf."

 

[Maxperson]

See the bold. That is your answer, and it is a good one. There is no other reason to have lore other than that right there. That is the reason gamemasters create lore - to have an impact on the player. And if the player respects that - then they won't insist on going against the lore.

Your argument suggests that you don't have any trust in your DM. Sad. I have trusted all of mine, and it has turned out great.

I'm going to push back on this a little bit. There is another reason to have lore. At least one more reason. And that is so that I can create adventures for the setting properly. There might be deep lore involved with an adventure that the players/PCs never discover, but which greatly affects the feel of the adventure and how it plays out.

 

[Maxperson]

"I am half-elf. Other half, also elf."

DM: "Okay. We're playing an elf campaign."
Player: "I want to be a human."
DM: "No. Elves only."
Player: "What about a half-elf?"
DM: "Okay. I'll compromise and you can be a half-elf."
Player: "Done. My PCs bottom half is elf."

 

[TwoSix]

DM: "Okay. We're playing an elf campaign."
Player: "I want to be a human."
DM: "No. Elves only."
Player: "What about a half-elf?"
DM: "Okay. I'll compromise and you can be a half-elf."
Player: "Done. My PCs bottom half is elf."

Oh man, now I'm picturing an immortal walking around set of legs, with no body because its human half died and withered away.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh man, now I'm picturing an immortal walking around set of legs, with no body because its human half died and withered away.

Commoners: "Run! It's the Bodiless Elfman!"

 

[TwoSix]

Commoners: "Run! It's the Bodiless Elfman!"

Why did Danny Elfman give his kids such strange first names?

 

[Thomas Shey]

So write it down after the session? Writing down what happens during the session isn't "prep".

That just turns on how much I'm sure someone is going to interact with the NPC in a way that might require some numbers. If that's the case there's no upside from my POV in doing in on-the-fly-and-after-the-fact; I'd probably end up doing more work that way.

 

[TwoSix]

That just turns on how much I'm sure someone is going to interact with the NPC in a way that might require some numbers. If that's the case there's no upside from my POV in doing in on-the-fly-and-after-the-fact; I'd probably end up doing more work that way.

I guess I'm just struggling to see where the difficulty lies. At least for modern D&D like 5e.

For pretty much every enemy, you know how potent they are, which tells you their proficiency bonus. You can eyeball their six stats by concept. And determining which skills and stats have proficiencies is also easy to eyeball by concept.

 

[tetrasodium]

So, this reads as, "I, the GM, get to discard your reasons (mechanical, worldview, or cultural influences) as invalid, so you cannot have it."

That is a bogus way to collaborate.

Proper negotiation would acknowledge the player reasons as valid, rather than discard them. And we'd also note the specific problems the GM has with tortles, and the ways they violate the game premises.

We then see if a way that allows a maximum of what the player wants, while engaging the fewest things the GM doesn't want, ends up palatable to both.

I too don't engage in fate style world creation when running d&d. Even in systems like fate with tools for the gm to manage that sort of collaboration it is quite the task trying to get players to grasp it so they can contribute at all without someone looking at it from a video game perspective misusing it to munchkin.

You didn't even mention the GM's concerns. Many many posts have been devoted to some flavor of "ok so tell me what appeals to you about playing a tortle?" & "why do you want to play a tortle?". Does the gm need to endlessly elevate whatever the player is throwing out with"acceptance" even while attempting to explain why a proposed PC is not going to fit the game while the player gets to demand it be treated with"acceptance" first?

How is your interpretation not a self nullifying point when applied to a player with something like the endless tortle debate where it already starts out completely avoiding acknowledging that the GM is even capable of being allowed those things the player is demanding be "acknowledged"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess I'm just struggling to see where the difficulty lies. At least for modern D&D like 5e.

For pretty much every enemy, you know how potent they are, which tells you their proficiency bonus. You can eyeball their six stats by concept. And determining which skills and stats have proficiencies is also easy to eyeball by concept.

Well, I wasn't thinking of D&D5e because I know next to nothing about it, and most of the games I do GM do not have that sort of quasi-lockstep (and may have non-combat relevant other numbers that have a relationship to each other).