D&D (2024) Worldbuilding Differences between 5e and 5.5?

[Vikingkingq]

In Midsummer, the fairies are also normal children. For example, Queen Titania has a human child as a fellow playmate. However, this play has several scenes where the fairies suddenly shrink to minute sizes.

I would not characterize Midsummer this way. Oberon and Titania relate to the "lovely boy stolen from an Indian king" as substitute parents quarreling over custody of a child whose dead mother was Titania's handmaiden. It would be deeply creepy to present them as children, given that they talk about having multiple affairs with adult humans before Titania falls in love with Nick Bottom.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Also, while we're talking folklore, the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Sidhe aren't depicted as short either.

Likewise, the Queen of the Fairies who appears in Tam Lin and the Ballad of True Thomas Rhymer is of the same size as humans, because they're often mistaken for humans.

 

[Yaarel]

I would not characterize Midsummer this way. Oberon and Titania relate to the "lovely boy stolen from an Indian king" as substitute parents quarreling over custody of a child whose dead mother was Titania's handmaiden. It would be deeply creepy to present them as children, given that they talk about having multiple affairs with adult humans before Titania falls in love with Nick Bottom.

My impression is, the more powerful a fairy is, the younger and smaller they appear, and the tinier they can shrink.

Of course, D&D does well to eschew any problematic implications from reallife folkbeliefs.

For example, because the alfar are shapeshifters who emulate extremely beautiful humans − but D&D can take this imply appearing as if the ideals of beauty of any human ethnicity.

 

[Vikingkingq]

My impression is, the more powerful a fairy is, the younger and smaller they appear, and the tinier they can shrink.

That's your impression, but not mine. Oberon and Titania are the most powerful, not the least.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think the tallest Elves in D&D are Athasian Elves who can be taller than 7 feet, and have really long lanky legs as they run across the desert instead of riding on Kank or Crodlu and the like.

 

[Vikingkingq]

I think the tallest Elves in D&D are Athasian Elves who can be taller than 7 feet, and have really long lanky legs as they run across the desert instead of riding on Kank or Crodlu and the like.

Yeah, but Dark Sun isn't going to be anywhere near 2024 D&D.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's your impression, but not mine. Oberon and Titania are the most powerful, not the least.

On the subject of the fey & named ones like Mab/Maeve/Titania/Oberon/etc in d&d I think it's impossible to ignore the role that the Dresden Files book series plays in deeply exploring & spreading knowledge of the fey/fey courts among what is general geek knowledge too.

A few bits & bobs that spring to mind from those books as super useful to GMs:

• The individual fey are bound by some kind of incomprehensible impossibly complex set of laws (the accords). They are unable to break them but suffer severely if they do unknowingly/unwillingly somehow manage to
  • Individual fey just know the accords as they apply to them (and to mortals when interacting with them)
  • Under the accords Fey who engage in any sort of exchange must (re)pay "debts" through something of "equal" value in an exchange going either way with them
  • Ownership of Debt owned can be traded away without notifying the one in debt making it possible to be in debt with a weaker fey like nobodyAlice & then have badassBob come to collect despite never meeting badassBob previously. It's implied a fey in debt would just know this happens but a mortal or half fey would not
  • An unpaid debt gives power over the debtor to the one who is due repayment until debts are repaid or some agreement still in good standing is in place.
  • The fey are bound by the letter of their word & the accords can further complicate things for mortals dealing with fey to make it worse than pushing the line with old school ring of three wishes
• I think half fey are mostly exempt from all that other than debts by virtue of being mortals unless they take on some important position within the court as a couple characters did
• The fey are not nice, they may or may not care about mortal affairs and/or well being.
  • Spring & Autumn courts existed at some point in the past but now it's Winter & Summer with their own roles of holding back The (exponentially) more powerful court is responsible for defending reality from the lovecraftian/outsider armies trying to invade from beyond reality and keeping the other court by conquering & simply drafting mortals into their siege by being just strong enough to be able to wreck the more powerful court if they quit doing their thing enough to conquer the mortal realm

Players will often try to insert the group's skill at assembling & understanding the letter of a statement but there are ways to deal with that as the GM. One of the best ways I find to deal with that is to tell players there are constant secret checks & that what I say to them is their understanding of the conversation that could leave them in debt not the actual words. The result is that dealing with the fey is freaking scary to players

 

[Yaarel]

That's your impression, but not mine. Oberon and Titania are the most powerful, not the least.

I need to reread Midsummers with your reading in mind of the fairy Titania being parental toward the child.

Following certain literary scholars, the child is a fellow child. Meanwhile the weather is storming into a cataclysm because the two powerful nature beings, Titania and Oberon, are behaving as if two toddlers having a temper tantrum.


Notably, during the Renaissance, Christian theological speculation was in a process of (literally) demonizing the British traditions about nature beings. There were mixed responses. A popular response, which Shakespeare seems to grow up with is:

The fairy arent evil. But, yeah, they arent exactly good either. Making these nature beings appear too young to really understand ethics, was a way to preserve the childlike innocence of the fairies, while also admitting their less than admirable behaviors on occasion.

 

[Maxperson]

How do the mechanical changes to the game (and how classes, monsters, spells, and etc) work change how the in-game world of a 5e game functions?

For example, does a larger list of "common" magic items mean a world in which magic items are more commonly assumed?

How do some of the changes influence the style of the game and the types of stories told through the game?

I can only say how I would do it.

The changes in classes would not change how the in-game world of 5e functions. If I adopt any or all of the new classes and subclasses, the old ones go away and the new classes are how it has always been. I'll need to use a little bit of handwavium as a component for that, but not nearly as much as trying to come up with an in game reason why every class and it's mother, aunt and gramma have changed into something new.

A larger list of common items doesn't change a thing in my game. Magic items are rare. Under my model a "common" magic item is just what you are most likely to rarely find, while the rare and legendary items are the least likely to rarely find. I don't count potions and scrolls as magic items for purposes of rarity. They aren't common, but finding a temporary item like a potion or scroll is much more common than something permanent.

I don't see any of the changes altering what stories can be created.

 

[Maxperson]

"Not all orcs" was built into the language of the 3.0e Monster Manual.

Edit: Indeed, even the 2nd Ed Monstrous Manual noted the possibility of exceptions to alignment, albeit rarely.

Yeah. I've been wanting them to go back to the 3e method of monster alignment for a long time now. It was really well done.