D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Hussar]

Oh. For sure. I know I'm whistling in the dark on this one. Everyone has their bugaboo issues. This is mine. Well, this and accurate portrayals of medieval sailing ships.

 

[Yaarel]

Do you concede, at least, that your direction does not seem to be where WotC is headed?

It seems to me, yes.

WotC is heading in a direction that imposes 'intellectual property' - to the degree it suffocates the freedom and the imagination of the players.

The 'official' multiverse is too set in stone.

5e is specifically driving away players who love to create new worlds.

When this direction becomes too extreme, it is a mistake.

There needs to be balance between structure and the encouragement of creativity.

Players who create worlds need RULES THAT PERMIT creativity.

Personally, I refuse to fight against the rules as written.

If the rules as written make it impossible to create a setting, because the official 'multiverse' setting is the only thing the Basic rules refer to, then many players will instead find a different game that explicitly says every setting can be different.

If the official 'multiverse' setting is too heavyhanded, then the giant of imagination becomes trapped by the Lilliputians and their thousand threads.

 

[Mouseferatu]

In over three decades of gaming, I have never (at least to my knowledge) met anyone who didn't feel entirely free to reimagine some or all of the planar cosmology, if they chose to do so. I'm not saying such people don't/can't exist, but I find the concern that DMs will treat the Great Wheel cosmology as some sort of cage (no Sigil pun intended) to be... let's say "largely unfounded."

 

[Yaarel]

In over three decades of gaming, I have never (at least to my knowledge) met anyone who didn't feel entirely free to reimagine some or all of the planar cosmology, if they chose to do so. I'm not saying such people don't/can't exist, but I find the concern that DMs will treat the Great Wheel cosmology as some sort of cage (no Sigil pun intended) to be... let's say "largely unfounded."

5e is different.

5e is doing it wrong.

Every other edition encourages the DM to make up their own world. Especially 1e!

Post Script ...

Well actually, 4e started suffocating the world builders by forcing all worlds to conform to the 4e Great Axis. Coincidentally I happen to enjoy the Great Axis. But other players are right to reject it because it isn't the world that they want. 4e should have been more flexible.

But 5e is so much worse.

 

[Mouseferatu]

5e is different.

5e is doing it wrong.

It is? Huh. I had no idea.

So, what else does it say in the PHB and DMG? And if you don't mind telling us, how did you get hold of them so early?

 

[Yaarel]

It is? Huh. I had no idea.

So, what else does it say in the PHB and DMG? And if you don't mind telling us, how did you get hold of them so early?

I refer to the Basic rules. But they seem copy-pasted from the Standard rules.

For example, all clerics must worship gods. Therefore all settings must have gods. Per the rules as written.

Personally, I have been playing D&D for years now. Right now I am tired of fake-medieval tropes. My intention was to use the 5e rules for a modern setting, to play around with reinventions of current events and thought experiments concerning recent scientific developments. But the rules as written make this more enjoyable setting impossible.

Likewise the rules referring to the interconnectedness of all settings makes a modern worldview impossible.

It isn't just one thing mentioned once, but a death of thousand cuts everywhere seemingly in every paragraph, with reinforcements of the 'official' worldview that kills imagination.

 

[Hussar]

I refer to the Basic rules. But they seem copy-pasted from the Standard rules.

For example, all clerics must worship gods. Therefore all settings must have gods. Per the rules as written.

Personally, I have been playing D&D for years now. Right now I am tired of fake-medieval tropes. My intention was to use the 5e rules for a modern setting, to play around with reinventions of current events and thought experiments concerning recent scientific developments. But the rules as written make this more enjoyable setting impossible.

Likewise the rules referring to the interconnectedness of all settings makes a modern worldview impossible.

It isn't just one thing mentioned once, but a death of thousand cuts everywhere seemingly in every paragraph, with reinforcements of the 'official' worldview that kills imagination.

Now, I'm nowhere near this extreme in my view. I'm not going to quit D&D simply because it uses a bunch of Planescape canon. Since that pretty much only applies to planar creatures, the simplest solution for me is to not use a lot of planar creatures. Not a huge deal and certainly not a deal breaker. Losing a large handful of monsters out of the massive pot that is D&D monsters isn't terribly difficult for me. Never was anyway.

And, Yaarel, I'm sorry, but the base system should not be terribly helpful in letting you completely reimagine the game. This isn't GURPS or Savage Worlds or FATE. D&D isn't a generic system. I might not like one part of the pizza that is D&D, but, that doesn't mean that I think that you should be able to make Chinese pot stickers out of it without a lot of work on your part. D&D is a lot of things, but, that setting you are talking about isn't something that D&D has ever supported out of the box. There is no reason to think that 5e would be any different.

People really need to let go of this idea that "5e is inclusive" means "5e supports anything I can think of". If you couldn't (easily) do your campaign world in any edition of D&D, you won't be able to do it easily in 5e.

 

[Mirtek]

5e is different. 5e is doing it wrong. Every other edition encourages the DM to make up their own world. Especially 1e! Post Script ... Well actually, 4e started suffocating the world builders by forcing all worlds to conform to the 4e Great Axis. Coincidentally I happen to enjoy the Great Axis. But other players are right to reject it because it isn't the world that they want. 4e should have been more flexible. But 5e is so much worse.

No, 2e already forced every world in the same multiverse. 4e simply made the misstake of forcing them into a different cosmos. 5e is going back to how things have been in D&D for the longest time.

Now, I'm nowhere near this extreme in my view. I'm not going to quit D&D simply because it uses a bunch of Planescape canon. Since that pretty much only applies to planar creatures, the simplest solution for me is to not use a lot of planar creatures. Not a huge deal and certainly not a deal breaker. Losing a large handful of monsters out of the massive pot that is D&D monsters isn't terribly difficult for me. Never was anyway.

Why would you lose / not use them? Just take the stats and ignore the fluff. I can take a balors stats and say in my world these are the stats of the Rabbit of Caerbannog and not give a **** about what fluff these stats originally came attached to

 

[SkidAce]

"Loooooook at the boooooones!"

 

[Gradine]

I refer to the Basic rules. But they seem copy-pasted from the Standard rules.

For example, all clerics must worship gods. Therefore all settings must have gods. Per the rules as written.

Except that the specific always overrides the general, and that applies to settings as well. Eberron completely re-wrote the rules for how Divine magic works and I expect it to do so again. Same with Dark Sun for that matter. You could redefine what it means to be a "deity"; there are several modern faiths that couldn't be described as worshiping a god or pantheon, yet one could easily still assign domains to such faiths. This is a nit, and one that can be easily rectified were one inclined to do so more than pick at it.

The major fallacy that I'm hearing (and correct me if I'm misreading) is that guidelines (and 5e has plenty of fluff guidelines) stifle creativity. This is simply false. There's a common trope that nothing drives creativity more than a blank slate, but nothing can be further from the truth. Structure and guidelines provide focus and direction which are necessary to drive creativity.

Furthermore, we've seen absolutely nothing of the DMG so far and have no reason to suspect it doesn't encouragement and support for DMs to engage in world and setting building. If there isn't I'll be flabbergasted.

Your modern campaign setting sounds really awesome, but frankly I can't think how any version of D&D would allow you to do what you want do out of the box without serious revisions and/or overhauls. Quibbling over semantics rather than just making the necessary fixes seems counter-productive,