D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Crimson Longinus]

@Hussar I agree that most of the stuff in the game should be "about something." Not everything, some bits can be adding flavour, but most of the time characters should be doing something consequential. But sometimes those "pointless side quests" can become satisfying stories in their own right.

One thing I've grown tired of RPGs in particular but in other media too are massive and overarching "main plots." I have come to appreciate episodic storytelling. If you have a big main story you follow for who knows many sessions (or episodes of a TV show) and then the campaign/show gets cancelled or the ending happens but just is bad, it kinda feels you wasted your time and it a bit retroactively spoils the things you liked about the previous sessions/episodes.

But in more episodic format where there are several consecutive smaller stories, linked by same characters and the setting, this obviously cannot happen. You will have several smaller endings, several short but completed stories. And if some of those are not that great, it doesn't really spoil those which were.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, noble versus any sort of war lord or chieftain.

And take a look at any time a noble is mentioned in an adventure versus any time a war lord or chieftain is mentioned. They're written very differently.

Yet the latter would still in many cases be "nobles" by normal definition of the word.

They're not a noble group in a D&D game, though.

I literally have no clue where you're going with this. One of the most famous medieval noble houses is not a valid inspiration for a D&D noble house? What?

Are you claiming that there is some special secret definition of "noble" that that is more limited than what the world normally implies in English language, which we should know so that we can sensibly apply the background feature?
Because that doesn't really sound like a ringing endorsement for the quality of the rule!

 

[Hussar]

@Hussar I agree that most of the stuff in the game should be "about something." Not everything, some bits can be adding flavour, but most of the time characters should be doing something consequential. But sometimes those "pointless side quests" can become satisfying stories in their own right.

One thing I've grown tired of RPGs in particular but in other media too are massive and overarching "main plots." I have come to appreciate episodic storytelling. If you have a big main story you follow for who knows many sessions (or episodes of a TV show) and then the campaign/show gets cancelled or the ending happens but just is bad, it kinda feels you wasted your rime and it a bit retroactively spoils the things you liked about the previous sessions/episodes.

But in more episodic format where there are several consecutive smaller stories, linked by same characters and the setting, this obviously cannot happen. You will have several smaller endings, several short but completed stories. And if some of those are not that great, it doesn't really spoil those which were.

Yeah. I gotta admit, running Candlekeep Mysteries was a great way to do a more episodic campaign.

 

[Lanefan]

OK, first off, I don't think Hussar was trying to be the type of disruptive that I'm about to be talk about, and may not have been disruptive at all--Hussar didn't tell us why he stabbed a door, after all.

He clarified later that his character was concerned that the door might be a Mimic.

If you get players who are deliberately being disruptive or harmful, it's almost certainly not actually an in-character thing. It's nearly always because they either don't care about the game or the other players' enjoyment, or because they really are trying to disrupt or harass other players.

The problem is, that the actions might be in-character (even if such actions are probably very out of character for who they're supposed to be or what the setting is supposed to be like), but very often it's because the player either doesn't care about the game or the other players' enjoyment, or is actively trying to harm or harass other players.

Or they're just trying to entertain the other players (I see this often).

Or they're trying to spice up a dull moment due to, either in or out of character, boredom (I see this often too: in-character is might be a planning session that goes on too long, or out-of-character it might just be too much table chatter).

If something's glaringly out of character, as DM I'll at least raise an eyebrow at the player, with a spoken or unspoken "Really?" attached. That said, I've long since learned to always expect the unexpected, and we tend to play unpredictable types a lot of the time anyway.

And if you address this sort of behavior as a strictly in-game thing, you're condoning the behavior--you're telling them that their actions are no different than any other action, and by doing so, you're giving them them the go-ahead to continue the behavior.

There's a big difference, at least the way I see it, between in-character malice and out-of-character malice. For example, were we in a game together you and I might be the best of friends in real life, but that doesn't mean our characters won't be at each other's throats with knives out once the game starts.

 

[Lanefan]

Let's do 200 pages now on how by RAW, all Nobles can Parry! How Illogical is THAT!?

I'd look more to discussing how, given that they're in the Monster Manual, all Nobles must by definition be monsters...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd look more to discussing how, given that they're in the Monster Manual, all Nobles must by definition be monsters...

Calm down, Robespierre!

 

[Lanefan]

I was thinking about this thread today, in light of just receiving a message from my DM in the Avernus game that I play that real life has just stepped on him and he will have to drop the game. Six months of gaming, and story, straight down the toilet.

And, frankly, that's been my experience through most of my gaming career as a player. LIke many here, I've been gaming a long time. Since I was about ten years old so, ahem about forty years now. Sigh. Pretty much forty years without much of a break. That's a long time. And the number of campaigns that I've been a player in that have come to a conclusion I can probably count on my fingers and have a couple of fingers and thumbs left over. Even in 5e, I've been lucky enough to be in six campaigns, three different DM's, all I would highly recommend to any player who wanted to sit at their table. Six campaigns, three completions. Batting 50% so, that's good, I guess?

Go back to 4e? Zero completions, at least three campaigns that I recall.

3e? Zero completions, at least four campaigns that I recall and probably many more.

2e and earlier? Maybe a couple of complete campaigns. Nothing that really sticks out in my mind. Most fell apart for one reason or another.

I'd say my completion rate as a player is probably about 10%. Give or take. Which is why I'm rather jaded.

I'd posit more that you've been woefully unlucky.

That said, if your preference for short ultra-fast-paced campaigns comes out in how you approach session 0 or session -1, there might be a bit of self-selection going on here; in that committed long-haul DMs might think your preferences and theirs don't align and thus you're less likely to get invited to their games. And by long-haul here I only mean a year or two; long enough to see a full-length AP through start-to-finish in detail.

IME campaigns that are going to sink usually do so within the first half-dozen sessions or so, before completng even one adventure; and I've been in (and run) some of those. No big deal.

I've DONE the "heroes meeting" so many times. I've done the "get your quest" thing so many times. I've done the "off you go on your epic journey" thing so many times. I keep getting asked how I know that this or that is pointless. I know it's pointless because it was pointless the last fifteen times I did the exact same thing.

Like you, I like to read. Love to read. Again, like pretty much anyone reading this. We all do. Now, imagine that every time you sat down to read a book, you could get about 100 pages in and then the book spontaneously combusts as does every other copy of that book. You get to read the first 100 pages of any book you want, but, no further. You know that it's possible to read more, and, maybe once or twice you've been lucky enough to do it, but, most of the time, it's flame city.

So, do you keep trying to read big, thick doorstopper novels? Or, do you switch to short stories? Me? I switched to short stories. If I'm only going to get 100 pages, then tell me the story in 100 pages. Because there's no point in a 300 page novel for me. I never get to read 2/3rds of it. When I say that my version of Lord of the Rings is 90 pages long, that's what I'm talking about. That's the analogy. The Lord of the Rings can be the best thing ever written in the English language, but, every time I try to read it, I don't even get to leave the Shire. I don't even make it to the Shortcut Through the Mushrooms.

Every time.

So, yeah, I'm not interested in all the side stuff. Because, well, I know that if we pursue that side stuff, it means that I will just get stuck never getting to read the end of the book. I never get to see the end of the movie. I never get any sort of conclusion at all. I get halfway through the campaign (at best) and then it collapses.

And I highly, highly doubt I'm alone in this.

See, that's why I like ultra-long campaigns: none of the individual steps (e.g. the heroes meeting) ever get boring because they're done so infrequently. I mean sure we repeatedly get a quest, do that quest, divide the loot, and get another quest; but that's more like quasi-episodic chapters. The actual book in this analogy has no end, because the end hasn't been written or even conceived at the time when you the reader (i.e. player) start in on page (i.e. session) one.

I'm trying to remember the last time when, as a player, I was involved in a situation where a brand new party all met for the first time: a "heroes meeting". I think it was 2007...and that campaign is still going.

As a DM I've seen it a bit more recently: I started a sub-campaign in my game, within the greater campaign (and eventually intended to be part of/interact with it), in 2020 with an all-rookie party.

 

[Hussar]

That said, if your preference for short ultra-fast-paced campaigns comes out in how you approach session 0 or session -1, there might be a bit of self-selection going on here; in that committed long-haul DMs might think your preferences and theirs don't align and thus you're less likely to get invited to their games. And by long-haul here I only mean a year or two; long enough to see a full-length AP through start-to-finish in detail.

That's not it at all. Of the campaigns that I was a player in that didn'T come to completion, there are only a couple because I left the group. It's almost universally because the game fizzled.

And, no, it's not spectacularly bad luck. It's pretty much the standard for most players IMO.

 

[Oofta]

5e Monster Manual View attachment 362005

View attachment 362006

Any mention in the DMG?

What I was responding to was the bolded

Except in terms of statblocks and how every bit of flavor text treats them differently.

You are technically correct. But the claim was that they were somehow special or stood above others. All I see is a standard stat block of someone that has minimal weapons training. Which they explicitly point out, that this statblock can also represent a courtier.

I could also post statblocks for commoners, guards, soldiers and so on. It's meaningless, these are just default representations of what their training is regarding combat. Unless the claim is that every commoner, guard and soldier are all somehow the same other than profession.