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

[AlViking]

Let me put it this way.

You--and several others--have held up "setting consistency" and GM vision and various other things as the thing that matters here. The thing that you're earnestly trying to pursue, for which all these other things are just steps on the road. Do we agree on that?

If so, then that is what I've been pursuing for compromise this whole time. You'll notice, every single one of the examples I gave preserves setting consistency. It ensures that the GM's vision remains utterly untouched. There are no tortles. There is just this one creature.

So. Are you telling me that setting consistency was never actually the goal? Are you telling me that all that rhetoric, all those pixels spilled, were just some kind of...smokescreen?

Because the only conclusion I can draw from what you have said here is that yes, it was a smokescreen, and the actual reason, the real root of these bans, is simply that the GM thinks tortles are stinky and therefore they shouldn't be played in this game. That it isn't a function of how much work the GM has done vs the player, nor of the intricacy and interconnectedness of the world-building, nor of preserving some kind of high-minded ideal. That it is, simply and exclusively, "I'm the GM, so my preferences are more important than yours."

If that isn't true, if the literal hundreds of posts talking about setting consistency were not a smokescreen and were in fact actually serious, then why do you reject massive efforts on the part of several other people to try to preserve that true goal, for which all the other things are just instrumental measures?

Setting consistency doesn't mean anything if anything can and does exist because "magic".

 

[Maxperson]

No, it isn't. Conspiracy is when two or more people work together to attempt to commit a crime. It still requires actus reus, generally, demonstrable acts which cannot be reasonably construed as anything other than an attempt to commit a crime, when the facts are understood together. E.g. buying fertilizer is not a crime. But buying ammonium nitrate fertilizer plus fuel, a detonator, gloves, and ski masks, and going to websites that provide information on bomb construction, and renting a van under a pseudonym using false ID, and being observed repeatedly investigating an area, and having drawn plans, and multiple people all clearing their schedule on the same day? Collectively those would add up to the actus reus of conspiracy to commit terrorism. Even if the plan is never actually carried out, it was in fact a plan and demonstrable, concrete actions were taken to make it happen: actus reus.

You can look up the legal definition if you like. I don't know if you live in the US, but here at least, it is required at the federal level and most (if not all) states also require that at least one person in the agreement must make an overt act to bring the agreement about. If the agreement occurred but no one acted on it, it is not conspiracy. However, everyone who was party to the agreement is guilty of conspiracy if even one participant committed a single overt act toward that goal.

If they discuss the crime of killing someone with an axe. Plan out how they could do it. And buy the axe, they never need to act to actually commit the crime at all to be convicted of conspiring to commit murder. Even though talking and buying axes are not illegal, and nobody acted to commit murder.

Believe it or not, there's even a term for a related thing, the "impossibility defense", whether factual or legal. TL;DR: factual impossibility is when the alleged crime literally could not have been done, e.g. if I shoot a person with intent to kill them....and they are already dead when I do that...then I didn't commit murder. (I could, however, be charged with attempted murder, since that's a different crime with a lower actus reus standard.) Legal impossibility is where the action being considered isn't even illegal in the first place, e.g. if I attempt to print bootleg copies of the first Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of the Old Clock, that's not a crime even if I was trying to commit intellectual property theft, because that book is now in the public domain--it's not illegal to print my own handmade copies of that novel, regardless of whether I knew that.


Sure there is. In the US, 22 states have strict liability (=no mens rea requirement) for statutory rape (warning, SA). Further, traffic violations and other similar acts, some of which are still outright proper crimes, do not require any mens rea component at all. Other countries such as Australia and Canada also have a small number of criminal offenses where strict liability applies. As an example, Australian air safety laws regarding the use of unmanned aircraft (read: drones) are often strict liability: all you have to demonstrate is that the act occurred, you don't need to demonstrate any mens rea whatsoever.

So: no. The mens rea is not the most important thing. In rare cases, it isn't relevant at all. In most cases, it is co-equally important with having actually done something worthy of guilt. Where there is no actus reus, no deed of any kind commmitted, there can be no crime. Thankfully, we have not reached the point of having thoughtcrime yet.

Intent is the most important thing. For those crimes you just listed, you still generally have to have intended to do the act.

"The crime did not actually happen" is the strongest defense in the world if it is true. For example, in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, (spoilers for those who are unfamiliar) the alleged "victim" is actually alive and well. He either killed, or exploited the death of, a homeless man to fake his own death, in order to get revenge on the son of a woman who spurned him, and to evade his creditors. Holmes is able to draw him out of his hidey-hole by pretending that the house is on fire, forcing the man to escape. That this "victim" is, in fact, entirely alive would be a slam-dunk defense against the charge of murder. Hence: the guilty act is just as important as the guilty mind. No actual act? No crime. No guilty mind? No crime. They are individually necessary and jointly sufficient, in logic terms.

Let's say I kill someone. What was the crime committed or was there even a crime committed? Tell me without knowing the intent.

How was I supposed to interpret the phrase "no one gets off the hook"? The meaning of the phrase "get off the hook [for]" something, means getting away with it without being punished.

If you were following the posts, you'd have seen the context when it first came up.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes kinda... but still no. It is (imo) world building for the players.


Players can not engage in world building during character creation absent a system like the city & character creation in dfrpg, but players making changes in the world and building new things through their in game actions is still going to involve quite a bit of world building because doing so typically (ime) involves the GM managing NPCs/NPC factions and creating adventures for the players to play though. The difference is that the gm running and creating the shell for those NPCs/adventures doesn't know what the result will look like until the players have had their chance to interact with the GM's still wet paint.

By extension, any player insisting on the world build benefits of a system like dfrpg's city & character creation during d&d character creation is wildly off base

Well, this is just a semantic difference, then. I don't consider the players' actions that shape the setting to be worldbuilding.

"Worldbuilding" is specifically the actions that set up the campaign setting/frame prior to session 1, whether that be GM notes or collaborative efforts with the players.

 

[Scribe]

Blades in the Dark has a specific theme. D&D does not.

And many words have been spilled over how D&D allowing us to put our theme into play, is its strength.

Not every table is a kitchen sink.

 

[Remathilis]

Setting consistency doesn't mean anything if anything can and does exist because "magic".

I'm going to assume then your world also has a carefully currated list of magic and monsters as well? There is no "a wizard did it" owlbears because "create owlbear" isn't a wizard spell? That all NPCs are bound to the same limitations as PCs when it comes to magic and you can, in theory, catalogue every species in the world because they are finite and new ones are never added?

 

[mamba]

Let me put it this way.

You--and several others--have held up "setting consistency" and GM vision and various other things as the thing that matters here. The thing that you're earnestly trying to pursue, for which all these other things are just steps on the road. Do we agree on that?

I’d say the conflict is between the DM’s preferences and the player’s. The DM expresses those in the setting, but consistency might not be the only thing that matters, aesthetics can matter too, just like the player was not happy with being a tortle in all but the visual.

If so, then that is what I've been pursuing for compromise this whole time. You'll notice, every single one of the examples I gave preserves setting consistency. It ensures that the GM's vision remains utterly untouched. There are no tortles. There is just this one creature.

and that one creature happens to be a tortle, so there are no longer no tortles

So. Are you telling me that setting consistency was never actually the goal? Are you telling me that all that rhetoric, all those pixels spilled, were just some kind of...smokescreen?

see above, it is about preferences, and if the player can draw the line at ‘it also has to look like a tortle’, the DM can draw it at ‘but it cannot look like a tortle’.

What you see as setting consistency and what does / does not violate it need not be how everyone else sees it. Aesthetics can be part of that

Because the only conclusion I can draw from what you have said here is that yes, it was a smokescreen, and the actual reason, the real root of these bans, is simply that the GM thinks tortles are stinky and therefore they shouldn't be played in this game.

is a tortle that has tortle stats but looks like a lizardman still a tortle? Are lizardman stats in a tortle body a tortle?

Is at least one of them acceptable to the player and GM? So far the answer is yes for the GM and no for the player…

 

[TwoSix]

Not every table is a kitchen sink.

Thank goodness, that seems like a horrible architectural fail.

 

[Scribe]

Thank goodness, that seems like a horrible architectural fail.

I did note the oddness of the phrase as I typed it, but my hands are tied.

 

[TwoSix]

I did note the oddness of the phrase as I typed it, but my hands are tied.

That's more of a late-night thing for me, but I admit I don't know what time zone you're in.

 

[tetrasodium]

One thing to consider: If the players really all start to want to play "special" species: Maybe they are actually tired of the setting limitations and want something new?
Maybe that doesn't have to mean you need to introduce countless new species to your setting, but it means something to talk about.

Creating a precedent is only dangerous if the players are feeling fatigue of the existing setting and want to experience something novel. It might not even be that playing tortles, dragonborn or warforged, Gythanki, Wildlings, Shardminds or Beholders is the solution, maybe that's just treating a sympton. On the other hand - maybe it's really this one player that is interested in this, and he'll be happy with playing the oddball character.

That doesn't align at all with my experience of players wanting to play some edge case not currently/typically found in whatever setting in running. Those characters almost universally fall into one of two camps and both are generally easy to deal with.

The first group sees a thing they think is interesting in a newly released or recently purchased supplement/splatbook and says "this seems cool because xxx, can I play one?". If it's reasonably balanced and could be adapted to fit the world in some way like saying "oh he's from Droaam[or whatever]" I'll probably allow it assuming there is no major conflict like a race needing large bodies of water in a darksun game where the player wants to be unhindered by that.

The second group may or may not be pointing to a recent release & will oftey be pointing at a very old very obscure edge case thing saying "if my character is one of these stardust elves who live around the base of Mount Tai it would let me start with x y and z so I could play [this cool thing] starting at level P instead of level Q, can I can I?" These requests are absolutely trivial and it's usually no big deal to work out some compromise involving an item past ritual or whatever. The only time it becomes a sticking point is when the player is trying to hide their character optimization goal by dressing it up as a RoLePlAyInG choice in the hope of invoking roleplay vrs rollplay if the gm says no.

Since the vast majority of those two tend to occur shortly after a new supplement that includes the desired edge case and never really come up all that often after a bit there is no reason to consider carving out a bigger place in the world for those edge case options.