D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[Hussar]

I used to really worry about dungeon ecology. I used to concern myself over my campaign's geography, politics, and history. Then I realized:

My Players Don't Care!

I still fret about some of those things, but realize all of those efforts are purely for my own edification and sense of verisimilitude. Cool encounters is what I concentrate on these days.

Well, that's too true. Far too often, DM's get wrapped up in the details and forget that the players, honestly, don't care that much.

 

[tetrasodium]

I used to really worry about dungeon ecology. I used to concern myself over my campaign's geography, politics, and history. Then I realized:

My Players Don't Care!

I still fret about some of those things, but realize all of those efforts are purely for my own edification and sense of verisimilitude. Cool encounters is what I concentrate on these days.

While I agree that players rarely care, having logical/plausible design of dungeons/towns/political webs/etc that holds up when looked at from a view of 10,000 feet makes it easier to GM when players do unexpected things & when you spend a long period of gametime in that particular section of the world rather than jettisoning it & jumping to a new half formed two dimensional problem spot area

 

[Lanefan]

I used to really worry about dungeon ecology. I used to concern myself over my campaign's geography, politics, and history. Then I realized:

My Players Don't Care!

I still fret about some of those things, but realize all of those efforts are purely for my own edification and sense of verisimilitude. Cool encounters is what I concentrate on these days.

If your players really don't care, then in some regards you're quite lucky.

But some players - and I'd count myself among them, though I've seen and played with far worse than me - do care.

If something doesn't make sense, that's fine - but I'll still start looking for the in-fiction reason why it doesn't.

Geography in particular. If it's not believable it'll bug me forever.

Last night while at a friend's place I saw she had on the wall a big printout of a randomly-generated world-scale map she's using as the homeworld for the game she just started. It's a very pretty map, with loads of potential for placement of cities, adventure sites, and so on - lots to work with there.

So what did I notice first of all?

I noticed that it's all too clear that the map generator's programming doesn't allow mountains and sea to be anywhere near each other - they're always separated by large areas of plains or forest or swampland - meaning that features such as the BC/Alaska coasts, the Norway coast, and volcanic islands such as Hawaii and even Japan can't exist. And that bugged me, if for no other reason than I live in one of those very regions.

(and if you can't have fjords it likely follows that you won't have Norse, and a D&D setting without Norse in it just isn't worth bothering with)

 

[tetrasodium]

If your players really don't care, then in some regards you're quite lucky.

But some players - and I'd count myself among them, though I've seen and played with far worse than me - do care.

If something doesn't make sense, that's fine - but I'll still start looking for the in-fiction reason why it doesn't.

Geography in particular. If it's not believable it'll bug me forever.

Last night while at a friend's place I saw she had on the wall a big printout of a randomly-generated world-scale map she's using as the homeworld for the game she just started. It's a very pretty map, with loads of potential for placement of cities, adventure sites, and so on - lots to work with there.

So what did I notice first of all?

I noticed that it's all too clear that the map generator's programming doesn't allow mountains and sea to be anywhere near each other - they're always separated by large areas of plains or forest or swampland - meaning that features such as the BC/Alaska coasts, the Norway coast, and volcanic islands such as Hawaii and even Japan can't exist. And that bugged me, if for no other reason than I live in one of those very regions.

(and if you can't have fjords it likely follows that you won't have Norse, and a D&D setting without Norse in it just isn't worth bothering with)

Indeed, having at least the 1000 foot view of things plausible makes it much easier as a gm to fill in those rough edges with interview level plausible BS that doesn't require too much thought on the gm's part to make sure the random bs doesn't need too much tracking to avoid conflicting with other rough edge covering random bs.

 

[pogre]

If your players really don't care, then in some regards you're quite lucky.

But some players - and I'd count myself among them, though I've seen and played with far worse than me - do care.

I hear you. I would be one of those players at some level I suspect there are many more of those players that care on a message board like this than in the wild. (No data - just a sense I have.)

I kind of wish I did have players who cared. Players who immerse themselves in geography, history, and ecological conditions would be right in my wheelhouse. However, realizing I don't AT ALL has refocused my work effort, and for me, makes things easier. Too many predators in a given area - no problem, etc.

I still am pretty careful with geography and politics but it is for me - it would bother me and that's enough to make the effort.

 

[jasper]

Unless you have a pet purple worm* I don't think it's that easy to dig through solid rock.

*purple worms leaving behind tunnels has always been weird too. It's not dirt. They can't just push it aside, they have to actually somehow destroy the rock or send it to another dimension. Maybe the purple dimension with purple rain?

You are such a Prince

 

[jasper]

Various snarks. At Ft Ord my barracks was 3 levels. Rooms on both sides of corridor and divide down the middle of building because were sharing the building with another company. The dining hall was 400 feet from my front door.
Oscar the orc was tired of being on chamber pot duty. He escape from his tribe. Move to sesame street and now living in a trash can.
Every see a fantasy movie from before 1970, how big were those sets?

 

[Oofta]

You are such a Prince

I never meant to create a burrow
I never meant to create a new dungeon
I only wanted to some time to eat some granite
I only wanted to be a freaking purple worm

Purple worm, purple worm
Purple worm, purple worm
Purple worm, purple worm

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Or unless you just reduce the square size to 3' and ban two-handed melee weapons, and-or abandon formal squares completely in favour of whatever positioning makes sense at the time by eyeball.

Yep. I am working steadily towards ending the tyranny of the grid and doing everything with tape measures, real LOS, and actual space on the map. And 1" = 3' will probably be part of that.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I used to really worry about dungeon ecology. I used to concern myself over my campaign's geography, politics, and history. Then I realized:

My Players Don't Care!

I still fret about some of those things, but realize all of those efforts are purely for my own edification and sense of verisimilitude. Cool encounters is what I concentrate on these days.

Yep. I quit really spending time on stuff outside the immediate adventure for that reason, they just don't care.

We started a new backup campaign and one of the players still hasn't named his PC after a 6 hour session. Its just not that important to him. Granted that is a bit too far for me but I'm not the DM.