D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Remathilis]

The core of the setting, as expressed in the core books, is what I'm talking about. Thank you for at least acknowledging that as opposed to trying to gaslight me.

I think part of the disconnect is that it's very easy to conflate the Known World (the vaguely defined setting of early basic modules and box sets) with Mystara (the setting developed around it through the Gazetteers and later box sets). The setting as told though the Basic and Expert and early BX modules is fairly low magic. It's also barely Mystara. The Keep on the Borderlands is not a fair representation of what the setting looked like come the Princess Ark.

You can map that same trajectory to Greyhawk (Gygax's folio is a very different setting from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer) or even Forgotten Realms itself (the original books are lower magic than the setting would eventually become). You can't judge a setting purely based on its original version.

Which is why people took such issue with that characterization; it doesn't reflect what the setting became, only what the proto-setting from which it emerged was.

 

[SteveC]

I have no idea what you're talking about here. The high-level NPC in question (Zenk) isn't even in most of the movie. He's just part of an optional sidequest. If the players e.g. follow the treasure carriages straight to the treasure chamber under the arena, they'll never even meet Zenk.

I think that a character found that the real hero was inside themselves all the time, so it was sort of worth it. Not saying anything more to avoid spoilers.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Funny how the quest to get the Helm of Disjunction turned out to be [redacted]. Reminded me of the Canto Bight sequence in the Last Jedi is a way, although it was certainly better done.

Yeah, the main impact it has on the outcome is via

Spoiler

Simon's increased self-confidence after attuning. "I got better," he says.

The big difference though is that in a movie, like Last Jedi, it is a sin to waste the viewer's time by not editing out unfired Chekhov's Guns. In an adventure module, it is a sin to railroad the players by failing to provide more than one route to a solution, which means good adventures ALWAYS leave behind unfired Chekhov's Guns.

In a movie which is intended to convey what playing D&D is like, unfired Chekhov's Guns and unexplored paths are ironically a virtue. Could they have

Spoiler

... ignored the vault and the magical seal, snuck in, and just talked Kira into leaving, and then told Forge they would ransom her back for the tablet and then just reneged on that deal, never pursuing the Helm of Mordenkainen at all?

Sure. Maybe my players will do that. We'll see.

 

[Mort]

I think part of the disconnect is that it's very easy to conflate the Known World (the vaguely defined setting of early basic modules and box sets) with Mystara (the setting developed around it through the Gazetteers and later box sets). The setting as told though the Basic and Expert and early BX modules is fairly low magic. It's also barely Mystara. The Keep on the Borderlands is not a fair representation of what the setting looked like come the Princess Ark.
.

I hadn't looked at Keep on the Borderlands in a while, so glanced through it yesterday.

There are a fair number of spellcasters, especially clerics.

There is a LARGE amount of magic items. Sure it's lower end, +1 swords, +1 armor (though +1 plate is pretty big in 5e), +1 rings of protection etc - but there is A LOT of it. Magic loot on most pages. It's not "flashy" magic, but I certainly wouldn't call it low magic.

It really reaffirmed my suspicion that adventures today, overall, are much lower on magic loot than the early days.

 

[occam]

What you describe is really more the Forgotten Realms and settings it inspired like Nerath, Exandria, Golarion, Midguard, etc..., then "D&D. Maybe to an extent Eberron & Dragonlance too.

But for the most part beyond the D&D monsters you listed, the rest like the epic fantasy, less gritty setting doesn't apply to say Greyhawk, which is much grittier and more mideval then the Forgotten Realms where even its fantasy Egypt has steam punk elements and access technology and epic magic regular fantasy Egypts wouldn't.

Its was when FR & settings it inspired became the default of D&D mixed with a prefernce for selling merch that was unique to D&D that D&D solidified as its own genre, because FR was increasingly distant from the more Tolkien inspired elements then of Greyhawk (although Greyhawk did have sci fi elements in the barrier peaks that FR never had). The subtle Canadian influence on FR spread throughout to the rest D&D in subtle ways too.

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, so maybe the point's already been made, but Greyhawk has owlbears, gelatinous cubes, beholders, mindflayers, drow, and displacer beasts, too.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think that a character found that the real hero was inside themselves all the time, so it was sort of worth it. Not saying anything more to avoid spoilers.

I agree, but that doesn't explain the other guy's comment about 100% choo choo railroading, which remains a mystery.

 

[Mort]

I haven't read the rest of this thread yet, so maybe the point's already been made, but Greyhawk has owlbears, gelatinous cubes, beholders, mindflayers, drow, and displacer beasts, too.

And rust monsters.

In my Greyhawk campaign, I've thrown beholders, mindflayers, drow and displacer beasts at the group. But NOTHING got the PLAYERS as worried, freaked out, and genuinely scared as throwing a pack of rust monsters at them.

 

[Remathilis]

I hadn't looked at Keep on the Borderlands in a while, so glanced through it yesterday.

There are a fair number of spellcasters, especially clerics.

There is a LARGE amount of magic items. Sure it's lower end, +1 swords, +1 armor (though +1 plate is pretty big in 5e), +1 rings of protection etc - but there is A LOT of it. Magic loot on most pages. It's not "flashy" magic, but I certainly wouldn't call it low magic.

It really reaffirmed my suspicion that adventures today, overall, are much lower on magic loot than the early days.

Still, even with all that, the Keep still resembles a medieval keep. No high level casters, magically augmented technology, or ye olde magic shoppes. However, if you step over the border of Karameikos (where KotB has been canonically placed in Mystara) and head to Glantri, you have a society that is more Hogwarts than Helms Deep.

 

[occam]

[Trimmed because ninja'd, several times over]

You want to play in a low-magic world, try Middle-earth. There are literally 5 wizards in the whole place, and the flashiest trick one of the most powerful of them can manage is lighting a pine cone on fire. (And arguably he could only do that because of a magic item.) From that standpoint, virtually all D&D is high-magic.

 

[occam]

Burne, a very explicit wizard (he had both a tower and a pointy hat!) was on the village council in Hommlet. That's 100% more wizards than my real life low magic city council has.

Only 100%? How does that math work?