D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Minigiant]

Some, yes, but often imperfect and rarely far-ranging.

Probably, as England was often the enemy in some war or other and even without that there was a degree of communication and travel between the two. But what did those peasants know about (current-day) Russia? India? Mexico?

I'd posit the answer is "not much".

Does it matter?
How is a French peasant hero getting to Mexico?

Most wonder based campaigns don't have the PCss travel far. Because if they did, it would make sense that the PCs know something general about that place or could gather info before going.

Wonder based campaigns never made sense to me without high magic.

 

[Cadence]

Does it matter?
How is a French peasant hero getting to Mexico?

Most wonder based campaigns don't have the PCss travel far. Because if they did, it would make sense that the PCs know something general about that place or could gather info before going.

Wonder based campaigns never made sense to me without high magic.

Do they have a strong presence in the inspirational literature.

In any case, like many other things, exploration/wonder seems like it's on a scale and not binary

 

[Lanefan]

Does it matter?
How is a French peasant hero getting to Mexico?

Most wonder based campaigns don't have the PCss travel far. Because if they did, it would make sense that the PCs know something general about that place or could gather info before going.

Er...not necessarily.

I've played with players - and on occasion have been one myself - whose in-character motto consists pretty much of "Where the map is blank, I'll go".

So while that French peasant hero may never have heard of Mexico she and her party know that the maps all end in the western ocean and it's all blank beyond there, so let's get on a boat...

Wonder based campaigns never made sense to me without high magic.

IME high magic - particularly easy-to-access long-range travel magic - is what ruins them. Fortunately, the wonder-of-exploration phase is usually long over by the time parties gain access to this.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes. Without exploration and-or surprise the wonder is largely gone.

I'm not all that enamored with wonder. I like interaction and quirk, which aren't effected by who placed what.

Just last night, we played and we visited my character's family who I wrote and designed and the DM played. It wasn't any less fun due to me having set them up because the fun was in the experience.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Probably because you sounded like you were trying to be boastful and flippant? Sort of like, "Hey, I can do all this stuff and I never bother planning, so I don't see why DMs are doing all this work and wasting time." Your tone reflected mine.


Ok, so you didn't mean this when you wrote it:


Because that basically sounds like the players do stuff (tracking things, using rules) and you just "roll a d20" and let a high result be favorable, the rules/mechanics be damned?


(bold added)

Of course you don't, no DM does IMO. But you claim you don't do ANY...

Which I find preposterous, frankly. Sorry to say it, but that's the way I see it.

Now, to be clear: I improv a LOT when I DM, too. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing wrong with building a world to play in, either.

Hopefully, you agree with that?

I did call out "in the scene" where I threw the rules out the window, as opposed to "in the adventure" or even "in the campaign". I'm not even sure there are rules to run a multithousands of soldiers pitched battle, at least not in the WotC books I have.

Throughout this thread it has been said that traditionally GMs create the world completely separately from player input. @Lanefan just explicitly said they want ZERO player input on their world building. I'm saying that as far back as 1990 SOME tables have been very collaborative and improv in their nature.

If I were a betting man I'd actually argue more GMs just run prewritten adventures without any world building than those that improv or curate a homebrew campaign added together.

 

[Jack Daniel]

This is something that I have seen cast about by various DMs over the years - sometimes even by myself. D&D is filled with a menagerie of races and creatures. Sometimes, too many. This can often lead to the DM’s knee-jerk reaction “Not in my campaign!” or “That doesn’t fit my world!”, generally with the modern thought of “if I allow one, there has to be others like it.” or that there needs to be whole backstory of a race/culture for how it came to be in the game.

So… first paragraph in the OP, and I already have a problem. "This can often lead to a knee-jerk reaction." Citation needed, methinks? Because from where I'm standing, the nigh-infinity of fantastical and alien species from folklore, mythology, sci-fi, and pop culture usually leads to thoughtful, considered opinions on the part of DMs, not "knee-jerk reactions." Framing the whole discussion by (mis)characterizing the curating of a campaign's playable options as "knee-jerk" is, uh, unfair.

But if the DM comes at the players as "this is the way it will be", they're possibly cutting themselves off from some possibly interesting story ideas or creating friction with the players by limiting their imagination.

I, personally, used to have very strong opinions about what I allowed for my campaigns. That’s changed a lot, and more rapidly of late. My eldest son often boggles my mind with the things he comes up with, and having such a different interaction with the fantasy he’s grown up with than I had has really made me reconsider my approach to my 80’s-borne campaign world, and the critters upon it - as well as other things about the world.

It's cool that you've felt the zeal of conversion and all — I know what that's like, it's probably responsible for the greater part of my own current play-style (with the lesser part being psychic trauma induced by DMs who thought it was the coolest thing ever to treat the game rules like the merest of suggestions and to make up every piece of every setting, adventure, and encounter on-the-fly) — but don't be surprised if preaching about it from atop a soapbox doesn't win many converts. It's hard to induce FOMO in the already contented.

I'm not all that enamored with wonder. I like interaction and quirk, which aren't effected by who placed what.

Just last night, we played and we visited my character's family who I wrote and designed and the DM played. It wasn't any less fun due to me having set them up because the fun was in the experience.

Just goes to show, I guess. Wonder is, to me, so very fundamental to the D&D experience. I can't even conceive of the game without exploration as the key pillar of play, with combat a distant second and thespianism an even more far-flung third. Speaking personally, basing a campaign around "interaction and quirk" sounds positively ghastly.

 

[DND_Reborn]

If I were a betting man I'd actually argue more GMs just run prewritten adventures without any world building than those that improv or curate a homebrew campaign added together.

I would agree with you this is probably true more now than ever IMO and IME, especially with "new" DMs.

 

[Umbran]

Doesn't that model rather destroy the player-side wonder of exploring the setting in-game, when the players already know what's out there because out-of-game they helped put it there?

So, in my experience, no. Let us take the given example:
Player 1: "There's a pirate nation to the north",
Player 2: "Yeah, it extorts protection fees from shipping lanes so import goods are really expensive".

In a typical D&D game, your characters grew up in the world, taking probably a decade or two to do that. The PCs should, in fact, have a lot of basic, layman's information about the place - like why the heck silk and cinnamon are so expensive. Everyone will talk about that.

It is like how your typical American might know that Canada exists, and that it is cold there, and they play hockey... but they will still be able to explore the country and find lots of wonderful stuff there.

Having placed some elements does not mean they know every last detail about what they place. Nor does it restrict the GM from placing things that were not put there by players. So, when the players decide to go mess with the pirates, and they eventually find the ancient sunken temple home of their pirate lich queen... there will be much wonder, have no fear.

 

[Umbran]

I would agree with you this is probably true more now than ever IMO and IME, especially with "new" DMs.

Eh. I know a bunch of "old school" GMs in the 80s whose campaigns were "run the official TSR adventure you just got". I expect that was common, back in the day, too, or else we wouldn't think nostalgically of those adventures as so much of the "common gaming experience" of the day.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Eh. I know a bunch of "old school" GMs in the 80s whose campaigns were "run the official TSR adventure you just got". I expect that was common, back in the day, too, or else we wouldn't think nostalgically of those adventures as so much of the "common gaming experience" of the day.

Sure, I've know a lot of DM's in the 80s who have favorite modules (Keep on the Borderlands and Against the Giants were my personal favorites!), but IME anyway it seemed to become more common as the decades of gaming went on. 5E seems to me ripe with DMs who only only run published adventures. YMMV, of course.