More like a bug dressed as a feature.
D&D 5E Those poor farmers!
Hussar
Legend
Yes because we know that d&d is all about gently holding the hand of tender DM's apparently i cable of making any decisions of their own.
Why do some people keep wanting to turn dnd into Harn?
Look it's simple. 5e is NOT a sim game. It isn't. If you are looking for a rule set that works like a world simulator then 5e is not for you.
That's not a bug or a feature. It's the simple truth.
Why do some people keep wanting to turn dnd into Harn?
Look it's simple. 5e is NOT a sim game. It isn't. If you are looking for a rule set that works like a world simulator then 5e is not for you.
That's not a bug or a feature. It's the simple truth.
Look, its simple. When someone sells rules those rules have to be clear, working and, for an rpg, must make sense. Doing a half assed job and pileing all the work the designer is supposed to do onto the customer is at best lazy and at worst incompetent, even when you label it with a catchy phrase like "rulings, not rules"
The books bring up the PCs owning properties, give rules for aquiring them and rules for running a business so this rules better work and make sense instead of causing everyone who reads them without rose tinted glasses to shake his head in disbelieve and then ask how this is supposed to even work.
You don't want to see D&D turned into Harn by having something besides dunegon crawling in it? Complain to WotC that they suggest that building a Trade Post is a viable thing for an adventurer to do. But they did and that means good rules would also explain, even in short and simple terms, how to handle a trade post in game instead of the one size fits all business rules which are more likely to cost money than getting you any regardless of the business.
But I guess WotC realized that with rare magic items (didn't stop them to spend 80 pages on them) the only reward they have left is gold and that they need more things to spend money on, so they quickly added construction numbers for trade posts and castles so that the PCs can spend money on something.
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Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
Well, really the entire economy revolves around supporting the needs of itinerant murder-hoboes. It's like a gold rush when adventurers come to town -- everyone can jack their prices up and they make a year's wages in a couple of days. Farmers really exist only to be raided and murdered by evil humanoids or be rescued for ransom.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Count me in the camp that says if you write rules and charge money for them, they should not require a rewrite. There's no point in providing rules that are ridiculous.
ad_hoc
(they/them)
I don't think they're ridiculous.
I am glad PCs are treated as special exceptions.
I found the repercussions of making PCs normal in 3e to be ridiculous. You couldn't have a normal world. Everyone would be superhuman. There would be no need for farmers at all. Especially with the overabundance of magic items.
I found I had to hand wave a lot of things in 3e to try to create a reasonable world for people to adventure in.
In 5e it's not a problem for me.
The rules are great for me because they are made with the playstyle I want. If they were the way you want them to be I wouldn't like them. We can't have both. It's a good thing there are a lot of editions and RPGs to choose from.
thalmin
Retired game store owner
Maybe. WotC could have included more about farming and trade and owning and runnng a business. Like the 186 pages covering some of the above in the book by Expeditious Retreat Press, "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" (a great book, by the way). But most new DMs would not wish to buy a DMG that is about 200 pages longer and costing an additional $15-$20 more for info that most would find totally overwhelming and, for their games, unnecessary.
Maybe WotC could have added a small paragraph about each building in the "Build a stronghold" list detailing what it does and how to handle it in game instead of throwing out names with no further explanation just to have things to spend money on?
They could have taken the space from the nonsensical "Run a business" rule and from the 80 pages of magical items which are supposed to be super rare so that many parties will hardly see any.
Or do new DMs not wish to have a few sentences of rules and guidelines for things the pcs can buy and instead want to be left completely alone with that?
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Ed_Laprade
Adventurer
This is starting to get out of hand. Perhaps I should have put smilies all over my posts? Look, I don't have any problem with what's there. But I would think that a fair number of people would have appreciated a line or two showing that the devs had thought things through. And a few lines of explanation, to show what they were thinking, wouldn't have hurt either. IMO, YMMV, etc.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Don't fret - I thought the same thing you did on first reading the DMG, and found myself wondering how PCs were supposed to make any money with a side business (retired PCs always seem to end up doing this), and I missed the bit on page 129.This is starting to get out of hand. Perhaps I should have put smilies all over my posts? Look, I don't have any problem with what's there. But I would think that a fair number of people would have appreciated a line or two showing that the devs had thought things through. And a few lines of explanation, to show what they were thinking, wouldn't have hurt either. IMO, YMMV, etc.
Lan-"D&D can actually be a quite reasonable reality simulator provided you're willing to let it"-efan
