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

[Maxperson]

Which is how I would run things. It's just not the way "GM vision" and all these other things are presented. There, the GM builds an incredibly tight world, where every city (and in some cases even every faction and most NPCs!) is pre-generated, there is no room for a previously-unknown land, a culture that has been isolated up to present, etc., despite that being....actually a real thing that happened IRL. Who remembers the journey of Marco Polo? Or myths and legends like Journey to the West?

What you say above is impossible, so cannot be true. Even the Forgotten Realms, which has more printed material detailing it out than any other setting, hasn't detailed out more than 1% of it. Nobody out there, and I mean nobody, has detailed out millions of NPCs and every inch of every country, county, city, town village, hamlet, mountain range, island, etc.

Whether or not a race can fit in entirely, as a unique individual, or is a disruption, has nothing to do with the level of detail of the campaign. It has to do with the theme/premise of the campaign setting.

You want the power, you take the responsibility--which means putting others first, even when that's inconvenient or slightly less fun for you than what you were originally intending to do.

And this is equally false. Nobodies fun takes the back seat. You the player have no right to expect it to happen that way. Your fun isn't more important.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, there was a half orc in at least one officially published Dragonlance work, and aren't that random third group of aquatic elves basically flat out called dark elves at points? You've certainly got options therein

No. Dark elves in Dragonlance were just evil elves. Dalamar was one.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, "dark elves" means something different in Krynn. Dalamar is a "dark elf" despite his fair skin and coming from the surface elven realms. Dark elves are elves who have turned towards evil and away from the gods of good.

Yeah. They veered towards Tolkien with their elves.

 

[Mecheon]

No. Dark elves in Dragonlance were just evil elves. Dalamar was one.

Evil elves who live in darkness who want to take over the surface world

Sure they're underwater rather than underground, but they're easily able to fill in if someone wants those sides of it

 

[Distracted DM]

New post

The Monsters Have Gained Some Clarity - The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Hello again! I’d wish you all a happy 2026, except that it seems more like we didn’t do a good enough job of making sure 2025 was properly dead and buried. Get [whack!] back [whack!] in [whack!] there [whack!] I want to start off by thanking you all for understanding the assignment and leaving...

www.themonstersknow.com

 

[Scribe]

Evil elves who live in darkness who want to take over the surface world

No? That's not Dalamar at all.

 

[dave2008]

I mean, it's partly based on what someone on this very forum has said, which got a bunch of upvotes from other users. Hard for me to take that as a weird extreme when it's an actual viewpoint argued here and supported by other users.

My issue is you seem take a comment or viewpoint in a forum post and try to extrapolate everything about the DM. One comment on a D&D forum does not a DM make. Heck, must of my discussion on these forums has little to do with how I actually DM. This is a discussion not a table of players.

 

[Maxperson]

Evil elves who live in darkness who want to take over the surface world

Sure they're underwater rather than underground, but they're easily able to fill in if someone wants those sides of it

I'm not sure what you're reading, but in Dragonlance dark elves were just surface elves who were evil. No underground. No underwater.

 

[Mecheon]

No? That's not Dalamar at all.

The abyss elves who want to flood the surface world or whatever?

My Dragonlance knowledge is weak outside of 'huh i can use this to justify lead dragons existing' so I may not know the specifics, but if someone's wanting a drow its at least something to gnaw on as an alternative

New post

Was posted up-thread

I specifically wonder why he keeps bringing up munchkin in this game because... 5.5e isn't too munchkiny at all? Generally I thought the opinion was 'yeah its basically 5e but the monsters hit harder on average'. The power level doesn't slide too far away from stock 5e

As for the other opinions, well. I gotta agree with D&D Next where they asked what the heck he was saying that 5E works for low fantasy because, no, it kinda doesn't really.

 

[Distracted DM]

The monsters once again know what they're doing.

The answer appears to be chugging along with more 2014 monsters:


Keith did not see this thread, which I suspect will disappoint some folks.

Lol maybe it's for the best that he didn't see it; it's pretty hard to follow after a while anyway, and I think it's gotten polarizing the way internet conversations tend to once they've gone on long enough.