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PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-13, 10:31 PM
I see lots of discussion of (D&D) settings in terms of the player options they provide. How much does that matter to you, personally? Is having a bevy of well-written, balanced options something that can compensate for weakness in setting design (such as inconsistencies, overuse of tropes, etc)? What about the reverse? Can a well-written, coherent, artfully-done world compensate for basically using only the "vanilla" mechanical options (altering the lore and naming of races and monsters to avoid copyright issues and promote consistency/tone, but generally playing those straight mechanically)?


I've been working on a setting now for about 5 years. But really, there aren't any unique mechanical bits. Lots of finding new lore explanations for existing things, lots of alterations to existing lore (including a completely reworked planar structure). The most unique thing I've really done are small variants to existing races, but players are welcome to play the "stock" versions. Oh, and unique magic items. But nothing that really breaks the mold.

A large part of that is playing with new players almost exclusively and mostly in rapidly-changing groups (a school club setting among other things)--I don't like deviating too far from the printed books mechanically for new people due to the risk of introducing complications in the learning experience and teaching them habits that won't transfer to other tables.

I have ideas for subclasses and feats, as well as one or two larger system shifts, but so far have never actually implemented/play-tested them so they remain nebulous, written up only in my notes and subject to change at a whim. So I'm investigating whether I should make a bigger effort to formalize some of those changes.


relative to the middle-of-the-road 1st party printed material. The sort of thing that, setting allowing, most DMs would say is on par but not above the other options.

Duff
2020-12-13, 11:15 PM
Mechanics is one of the ways to make a setting feel different.
Others are -
Distinct types of adventures - Darksun makes survival adventures more of a thing
Different types of opponent - Call of Cthulu games would be very different if you were meeting goblins and orcs instead of cultists
Different types of adventure - Standard D&D has lots of dungeon crawls. A setting would feel different if most adventures were around intra-community politics.

But a setting will not feel very different to other D&D settings if a band of humans elves and dwarves with a skillset of weapons, skills and magics get hired by The Wizard to go to [The Place], kill [The Orcs] and bring back [The Thing] even if the wizard has blue skin and a forked tongue and the [The Orcs] are called Goollies and speak Goulash.
Unless the characters doing this adventure are functionally different

Mechalich
2020-12-13, 11:33 PM
The most popular D&D setting, Forgotten Realms, is also the most generic one, so I don't think unique mechanics matter all that much.

Honestly, because D&D is such a vast kitchen sink - there are thousands of monsters, hundreds of class variants, and dozens of player races in just the 1st party 'generic' material - a few distinct mechanics are largely going to be overshadowed unless they actually are OP in some way. Eberron supposedly makes a big deal about dragonmarks, but dragonmarks never come up much in discussions of player options simply because they aren't actually especially good. Meanwhile, Incantatrix is a FR-derived PrC mentioned incredibly often in 3.x discussions because it's extremely powerful.

NichG
2020-12-13, 11:52 PM
For me it's essential. But I'd also say that I'd have difficulty playing in an established system with a GM who doesn't actively homebrew or create custom things.

There's a lot of things I like about the existence of unique mechanics or options, but probably the core thing is that the revelation of undiscovered possibilities is a majorly resonant theme and shapes much of my anticipation and enjoyment of a game. That means that if I have an existing mastery and knowledge of the details of the physically possible within a world and know confidently that those things do in fact set the real bounds under which things operate, it quickly suppresses my interest.

I don't necessarily have to be constantly discovering things, but its important to think that things could be different - that the mechanics I've seen so far only represent what I currently know, and not all that exists to be known. The existence of unique things in the setting basically implies to me that there are not just rules, but rule-creating forces that allow e.g. a group of warriors training in the depths of a jungle to discover fundamentally different ways of fighting (new classes, PrCs, weapons, maneuvers, etc) through a process of discovery that just doesn't happen to be codified. It means that seeking out a reclusive archmage to apprentice with could be meaningful and have consequence, as opposed to just being a nod towards verisimilitude when I know that actually I'll have access to exactly the same options just leveling up on my own.

One of my favorite things that Planescape did for example was to drop lots of suggestions that the material in the books was incomplete and that fundamentally there wasn't a canonical answer, but each of those places was an invitation for different GMs or tables to find a way to their own answer to the mystery.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 12:06 AM
For me it's essential. But I'd also say that I'd have difficulty playing in an established system with a GM who doesn't actively homebrew or create custom things.


I'll note that I do heavily homebrew monsters. Often playing around with new mechanics (instead of using existing class-analogues). Cross-list casting is a normal thing, as are "unique" abilities. I've been experimenting with multi-phase boss fights, where the player actions (beyond just beating them into a phase transition at certain HP thresholds) can trigger radical changes in how they fight. Heck, last night I had an (impromptu) "rap"/poetry battle result in entirely skipping a phase that would have been annoying to the players (who are melee heavy, as it involved lots of forced movement and denial of melee opportunities).

To be honest, a lot of my homebrewed monsters involve grotesques or body horror though...one of the more notable examples included jellyfaces.


Take a humanoid head. Make the skull transparent and slightly gelatinous. Place jellyfish tendrils around the face area, as if a jellyfish.

These were only a nuisance by themselves--their only attack deals 1 damage and they have low HP and AC. But their attack imposes a stacking condition, much like 4e's disease tracks, getting worse if they got hit more or if they failed saves; successful saves (after being afflicted) only moving them back down the track not ending the condition.
Start: Poisoned
Second: As per the spell slow.
Final: Paralyzed

NichG
2020-12-14, 12:25 AM
I'll note that I do heavily homebrew monsters. Often playing around with new mechanics (instead of using existing class-analogues). Cross-list casting is a normal thing, as are "unique" abilities. I've been experimenting with multi-phase boss fights, where the player actions (beyond just beating them into a phase transition at certain HP thresholds) can trigger radical changes in how they fight. Heck, last night I had an (impromptu) "rap"/poetry battle result in entirely skipping a phase that would have been annoying to the players (who are melee heavy, as it involved lots of forced movement and denial of melee opportunities).

To be honest, a lot of my homebrewed monsters involve grotesques or body horror though...one of the more notable examples included jellyfaces.


Take a humanoid head. Make the skull transparent and slightly gelatinous. Place jellyfish tendrils around the face area, as if a jellyfish.

These were only a nuisance by themselves--their only attack deals 1 damage and they have low HP and AC. But their attack imposes a stacking condition, much like 4e's disease tracks, getting worse if they got hit more or if they failed saves; successful saves (after being afflicted) only moving them back down the track not ending the condition.
Start: Poisoned
Second: As per the spell slow.
Final: Paralyzed


Yeah, at least this sort of thing is necessary for me. But I guess to explain the idea, if you only ever homebrewed grotesque body horror monsters, it would probably make me want to play an alienist, symbiote-user, prosthetic-crafter, etc of some variety so that I'd have an active character motivation to go and put myself into risk to find out just what is driving those abilities or what sort of fundamental horrific truths they reveal about the nature of the cosmos.

So the homebrew stuff in a given setting or campaign is the really high saliency attention-magnet for me - I will tend to beeline towards it.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 12:29 AM
Yeah, at least this sort of thing is necessary for me. But I guess to explain the idea, if you only ever homebrewed grotesque body horror monsters, it would probably make me want to play an alienist, symbiote-user, prosthetic-crafter, etc of some variety so that I'd have an active character motivation to go and put myself into risk to find out just what is driving those abilities or what sort of fundamental horrific truths they reveal about the nature of the cosmos.

So the homebrew stuff in a given setting or campaign is the really high saliency attention-magnet for me - I will tend to beeline towards it.

Ah. I think I understand. That's something to think about.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 07:10 AM
Is having a bevy of well-written, balanced options something that can compensate for weakness in setting design (such as inconsistencies, overuse of tropes, etc)?

In general, yes. I rarely (well, honestly, never) take a published setting at face value. All of my games, from the old Call of Cthulhu days through DC Heros and World of Darkness campaigns, up to my current 5e D&D campaign, whether I'm the GM or a player, are run in custom settings that at best borrow elements from published settings.

"Kind of like your salad bar. We take what we want and leave the rest."


What about the reverse? Can a well-written, coherent, artfully-done world compensate for basically using only the "vanilla" mechanical options (altering the lore and naming of races and monsters to avoid copyright issues and promote consistency/tone, but generally playing those straight mechanically)?

Yes, as long as those vanilla mechanics are more or less decent. A great setting will not make bad mechanics playable. In fact, personally, I get a kick out of how someone might reinterpret existing mechanics to fit their setting. For example, using D&D as an example, if your setting provided an in-fiction explanation for what a spell slot actually is, that might be kind of cool.

Martin Greywolf
2020-12-14, 07:59 AM
I see lots of discussion of (D&D) settings in terms of the player options they provide. How much does that matter to you, personally?

What are even player options? Especially with 5e, things like character backgrounds are part of the PC mechanics to a degree, and that chucks entire backstory into mechanical player options territory.



Is having a bevy of well-written, balanced options something that can compensate for weakness in setting design (such as inconsistencies, overuse of tropes, etc)? What about the reverse?

No. A setting is either written well, or it isn't. It either has interesting mechanical bits, or it doesn't. These two are entirely separate and should be judged as such.

On balance, it really depends on where you fall on the two scales. If the setting has dividne mechanical bits, but its writing makes My Immortal look good, I will stay away from it. If it has good mechanical bits and bad writing, I'll struggle through to cannibalize the good bits and then promptly chuck it in the closet and forget about it.

You can't have the mechanical bits entirely absent, you already mentioned altering planes, and I already pointed out character backstories being a mechanical thing.

In the end, what tends to matter the most is this: is something is included, make sure it's good, or at the very least decent. You need character backgrounds for 5e, so make sure those you do have make sense and have a decent coverage of what players may want to pick. You may want to add a subclass, so bite the bullet and do the maths to see how it stacks up against other options.



Can a well-written, coherent, artfully-done world compensate for basically using only the "vanilla" mechanical options (altering the lore and naming of races and monsters to avoid copyright issues and promote consistency/tone, but generally playing those straight mechanically)?

In broad terms yes, but you'll find that this tends not to happen. Once you start to write a setting well, you'll see all sorts of mechanical things crop up. Maybe small ones, but still. The details of how your clerics and druids work, how currency and trade function, what is the role of guilds and so forth will have a very direct impact on things like where you can buy magic items, what loot rewards look like and so on. If you make your setting LotR book like, you will have almost none or no plate armor, if you go for movie LotR, plate armor is dime a dozen and almost everyone has it.




A large part of that is playing with new players almost exclusively and mostly in rapidly-changing groups (a school club setting among other things)--I don't like deviating too far from the printed books mechanically for new people due to the risk of introducing complications in the learning experience and teaching them habits that won't transfer to other tables.

This is a non-issue.

When it comes to how a setting works, well, it doesn't matter what you write, they'll have to learn. There are ways to smoothe the learning curve for the setting, but this problem is ultimately not entirely solvable.

When it comes to having a new subclass, well, no one is forcing anyone to use it, are they? Your new players will be able to play with just reading core, it's no like they have to memorize every class - that is DM's cross to bear.



I have ideas for subclasses and feats, as well as one or two larger system shifts, but so far have never actually implemented/play-tested them so they remain nebulous, written up only in my notes and subject to change at a whim. So I'm investigating whether I should make a bigger effort to formalize some of those changes.

Untested large system shifts should stay in the bin until they are playtested. And frankly, if you want to make a large shift, you're often better off writing your new take on rules entirely, a la PF or E6.

For smaller stuff, here's the thing. If that class or subclass makes obvious sense in the setting, the hole you leave behind by not including it will be felt. If you have Anti-paladins, who strive to be the exact opposite of paladins, and have them be just like paladins mechanically, something will feel off. You need a new class for that, one that revels in chaos, with subclasses that let you be Joker or Littlefinger.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-14, 08:34 AM
It is entirely dependent on the setting. Some settings have their entire identity wrapped around some central concept, so you need to model that with reasonable fidelity, if you don't want there to be a weird disconnect between how the setting is said to work and what your players are actually doing.

But, at the same time, many established game systems give you a massive glut of character options already. More possible games exist within "vanilla" D&D design space than anyone is playing or even willing to play. The way to get to your desired setting is to cherry pick the Hell out of those options, not adding more.

Quertus
2020-12-14, 08:35 AM
It feels like you're asking, "do you prefer to have a skeletal system, or a circulatory system", and my response is, "um… both?".

The world should be consistent. That is a prerequisite for Exploration, and Intelligence. There is no point thinking about Doctor Who, or incoherent settings. But thinking about and investigating *why* there's is so much "body horror" in the world - *especially* when you know of other worlds to compare it to, to realize that it isn't just "normal"? Now we're talking!

Also, the answer depends on your base. 3e is pretty high on the PC "options" list already¹, so adding more options there has less (but not no!) appeal… balanced against a feeling of railroading ("the GM created a new 'body modifications' subsystem… do you think he'll get upset if we just try to ignore it?") / GM's pet ("I'm the GM's favorite, because *I* took all this custom stuff that they made.").

But, most of all, it depends on the group. We can just talk to you to help you develop the vocabulary and gain experience with the concepts; what matters is how it affects *your* groups.

And, for that age group? Your "body gags" are probably spot-on. :smallwink: Kudos for caring about how your game will impact their integration into future games, btw!

¹ yet, even so, the DMG encouraged the DM to create *more* player-facing options - custom prestige classes and the like - to help give their world a unique feel

Segev
2020-12-14, 09:31 AM
For me, if your setting is built such that the mechanics already capture all of the cool elements of it, you don’t need more mechanical options. But if you setting has its own Rules and cool things that don’t fit existing mechanics, you should make rules to use those things.

Wheel of Time’s magic system does not work well with D&D style casting. It needs its own system. If your setting has magic that is modeled well by the existing D&D system, then you don’t need special mechanics to make it work.

I hope that makes sense.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 10:46 AM
The world should be consistent. That is a prerequisite for Exploration, and Intelligence. There is no point thinking about Doctor Who, or incoherent settings. But thinking about and investigating *why* there's is so much "body horror" in the world - *especially* when you know of other worlds to compare it to, to realize that it isn't just "normal"? Now we're talking!


In this particular case, it's just that the more grotesque ones require more active homebrew (rather than just reskinning stock stat blocks). I reskin most things. And for some reason my creativity is greatest with those--maybe because I'm freed from the need for those things to make sense. Because in universe they don't (being demonically-twisted artificial horrors).

And the grotesques have a common origin and aren't really (in in-universe terms) very common--they're what happens when acolytes of the Twisted (a particular demon lord) become active. His big thing is making "art" by mixing and matching various biological organisms in horrific (to mortals) ways.

@Martin Greywolf--character backgrounds are, for me, generally fully custom. If I ever published this setting I'd need to write up suggestions about what backgrounds work where--there are large swaths that are landlocked so, for instance, being a Sailor from that area doesn't make much sense. Etc. And I do have a bolt-on "regional background traits" system--depending on where your character is from, they can pick up additional culturally-relevant proficiencies.

@EggKookoo--I've actually done a lot of work to figure out exactly how spell slots work. I've posted earlier versions in the past, but might want to post an updated one in the future. One of the goals of my particular setting is to make the kitchen sink actually work. Which means explaining why the mechanics and the universe aren't so disconnected. I even have one for HP-as-meat--that one hasn't officially made it into a game and become canon[1], but it's in the back of my mind for NPCs.

[1] that's my standard. The only things that are fixed in stone are things that have come up at a table or which were relied on to derive the result at the table. Until then my notes are not canon and are subject to change.

Telok
2020-12-14, 11:31 AM
For me, if your setting is built such that the mechanics already capture all of the cool elements of it, you don’t need more mechanical options. But if you setting has its own Rules and cool things that don’t fit existing mechanics, you should make rules to use those things

This, assuming that the setting writing and mechanics are average or above.

My personal breaking point is characters in a game being mechanically unable to do things that normal people in a setting do on a regular basis. You want the players to go "oh cool!" at some point in reading the setting or interacting with an npc. Great, good, fine, wonderful. You'd better make sure that the mechanics enable it.

This is especially important when you put something out in public for other people to use, because other people don't have your expectations on how stuff should work or your experience with the source material. They may well read things once and try to run it without cross checking or adjusting things.

Examples... Lets see...

StarFinder has level restricted gear for pcs but not for npcs, and pcs are restricted to buying level+2 gear at max. A quadcopter with a camera is a level 6 item in that game that an npc 8 year old with mommy's credit card can buy off the notInternet. First to third level pcs can't buy one, new or used, for any amount of money. They have to go beat up an 8 year old using their mind control spells, military grade armor and weapons, grenades, spaceship with nuclear missiles, etc.

Listening in on a 5e Eberron game I heard a dm say they were running things by the book, apparently referring to the default dmg assumption that magic items are rare and can't be bought. I think the player had asked to buy an everburning torch style lantern or something when they were literally in a shop for stuff like that and a npc had just bought a minor magic item before them.

A d&d 4e game I was in we got attacked by some low end human bandits. Some of the minions used an immobilize attack, literally a "they shoot an arrow that pins your shoe/foot to the ground" power. Our 10th level ranger wanted to do that. Nope. Not a ranger power so you can never do what a cannon fodder minion does several times each fight.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 12:24 PM
My personal breaking point is characters in a game being mechanically unable to do things that normal people in a setting do on a regular basis. You want the players to go "oh cool!" at some point in reading the setting or interacting with an npc. Great, good, fine, wonderful. You'd better make sure that the mechanics enable it.

As a GM I see the value in NPCs being built using a separate set of templates from PCs. I don't want to manage multiple NPCs each with the complexity of a PC.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 12:53 PM
As a GM I see the value in NPCs being built using a separate set of templates from PCs. I don't want to manage multiple NPCs each with the complexity of a PC.

Very much so. And my chosen system (5e D&D) has that as its basic operating premise. PCs and NPCs are not transparent, full stop. And trying to make them so is extremely painful and very much (IMO) not worth doing.

Honestly, I love being able to hack-and-slash the monsters. I can create things that are
a) very much simpler to run (e.g. not having to look up spells is a huge time saver)
b) can do things that befit their particular role in the narrative.

PC classes are a game-UI window into the world, designed for things that are balanced for player-use-cases. This includes things like resource management (which very few monsters have to worry about).

And moving a lot of the worldbuilding effects outside of the player option bucket means I can actually make a coherent setting--you need strong effects, but handing those willy-nilly to players means the setting and game gets broken (or doesn't make any sense not to be broken). IMO, this was a mistake 3e made--you ended up with a lot of horribly broken spells that were mainly designed for NPC/worldbuilding uses. Plus templates, etc.

BRC
2020-12-14, 12:55 PM
This, assuming that the setting writing and mechanics are average or above.

My personal breaking point is characters in a game being mechanically unable to do things that normal people in a setting do on a regular basis. You want the players to go "oh cool!" at some point in reading the setting or interacting with an npc. Great, good, fine, wonderful. You'd better make sure that the mechanics enable it.

This is especially important when you put something out in public for other people to use, because other people don't have your expectations on how stuff should work or your experience with the source material. They may well read things once and try to run it without cross checking or adjusting things.

Examples... Lets see...

StarFinder has level restricted gear for pcs but not for npcs, and pcs are restricted to buying level+2 gear at max. A quadcopter with a camera is a level 6 item in that game that an npc 8 year old with mommy's credit card can buy off the notInternet. First to third level pcs can't buy one, new or used, for any amount of money. They have to go beat up an 8 year old using their mind control spells, military grade armor and weapons, grenades, spaceship with nuclear missiles, etc.

Listening in on a 5e Eberron game I heard a dm say they were running things by the book, apparently referring to the default dmg assumption that magic items are rare and can't be bought. I think the player had asked to buy an everburning torch style lantern or something when they were literally in a shop for stuff like that and a npc had just bought a minor magic item before them.

A d&d 4e game I was in we got attacked by some low end human bandits. Some of the minions used an immobilize attack, literally a "they shoot an arrow that pins your shoe/foot to the ground" power. Our 10th level ranger wanted to do that. Nope. Not a ranger power so you can never do what a cannon fodder minion does several times each fight.


I do that! But with caveats, it's almost always something special or unique

Like, for example, in my current setting there are goblin Pyromancers. "Pyromancy" isn't just fire-themed magic, it's a fusion of martial art, magic, and alchemy, Goblin Pyromancers have some unique tricks with their mechanics that don't line up with anything the PC's can do.

but, the point is that Goblin Pyromancers are, like, a unique Thing in the setting. They train for years in this particular style to do these things.

Similarly, one of the PC's is an orcish bard. In this setting, Only Orcs Can be Bards, because the Bard mechanics are what I use for, what is essentially, clerics in a society that venerates and draws power from ancestral spirits instead of Deities.

Basically, unique mechanics are great, but they have to be diegetic. If your chosen mechanical system includes certain worldbuilding assumptions, you need to either change those assumptions, or change those mechanics.

Batcathat
2020-12-14, 01:01 PM
And moving a lot of the worldbuilding effects outside of the player option bucket means I can actually make a coherent setting--you need strong effects, but handing those willy-nilly to players means the setting and game gets broken (or doesn't make any sense not to be broken). IMO, this was a mistake 3e made--you ended up with a lot of horribly broken spells that were mainly designed for NPC/worldbuilding uses. Plus templates, etc.

I agree with most of the post but not this part. NPCs being able to do something PCs can't do feels like cheating to me. Maybe the PCs need to be really high level, maybe they need some extremely rare component or whatever but I don't like the idea that the PCs just can't do it. If it's stuff that's inherently broken it should broken for NPCs to use too (supposedly intelligent NPCs having insanely powerful abilities but being too stupid to use them properly is rather annoying anyway).

EDIT: Maybe I should clarify that I'm cool with deities or similarly powerful NPCs doing stuff that's out of the party's reach. The above applies to NPCs that start out at more or less the same level (literally or figuratively) as the PCs.

jjordan
2020-12-14, 01:11 PM
Mechanics are important to me because I use them to run the game. Settings and lore are nice, but often get in the way if you are playing outside the established settings. I play homebrew settings and tend to build the world around the participants. But the settings and the lore are what bring a lot of players in and provide context for the mechanics and make them readable.

Silly Name
2020-12-14, 01:23 PM
Very much so. And my chosen system (5e D&D) has that as its basic operating premise. PCs and NPCs are not transparent, full stop. And trying to make them so is extremely painful and very much (IMO) not worth doing.


It's ok for PCs and NPCs to play (mechanically) by different rules, especially if this nontransparency is used to facilitate the game playing as it's meant to be (such as 5e tying NPC's proficiency bonus to their CR, rather than HD like it works for PCs).

However, NPC having mundane abilities that are somehow outside of the PCs' reach feels... weird. It's one thing to not be able to replicate the Tarrasque's Swallow Whole ability - you're Medium sized, and your mouth and stomach don't work the same as the Tarrasque, we can all agree on that - but it'd be quite weird if a perfectly normal humanoid NPC could run up a wall just thanks to intense training, and PCs being forever locked out of that. In D&D 5e, if a player wants to do that they can play a Monk and replicate all the cool stuff Monk-like NPCs do.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 01:44 PM
However, NPC having mundane abilities that are somehow outside of the PCs' reach feels... weird. It's one thing to not be able to replicate the Tarrasque's Swallow Whole ability - you're Medium sized, and your mouth and stomach don't work the same as the Tarrasque, we can all agree on that - but it'd be quite weird if a perfectly normal humanoid NPC could run up a wall just thanks to intense training, and PCs being forever locked out of that. In D&D 5e, if a player wants to do that they can play a Monk and replicate all the cool stuff Monk-like NPCs do.

If perfectly normal humanoid guard NPCs are running up walls all over the place, I agree, it seems like that's something so easy to learn that you would expect any martial-class PC to be able to do it. But if you run into Joe Wallrunner NPC, who has the property that he can move up vertical surfaces at his normal movement speed, then it's just that Joe is an unusual specimen. Your fighter PC can't replicate it, but neither can Joe's guard friends. He's got a special talent, knack, whatever.

This gets into my view that D&D 5e PC classes are really just feature presets, put together for ease of play and for game balance. A PC monk has Flurry of Blows, Unarmored Movement, and Deflect Missiles (among other things). That doesn't mean an NPC with one of those features must have the other two. Or that an NPC with Flurry of Blows can't also have some equivalent of Action Surge or even Pact Magic. These are all just game terms for things creatures can do. A PC class is just a package of them. For ease of play, D&D says you pick a package and you get what the package has and you don't get stuff that's not in the package. Then there are two optional rules to get around this: multiclassing, which makes available the features from another package, and feats, which provides package-less features. But an NPC doesn't use the same package that a PC uses, because PC packages are designed for player play, and NPC packages are designed for NPC handling.

It does lead to the frustration that a player sees a creature use something from its package of features and wants that feature, but his own chosen PC class doesn't include it. Maybe it exists in another class and can be eventually accessed via multiclassing. Or maybe it can be replicated with a feat. The developers of D&D went this way at the cost of variety for the benefit of simplicity and accessibility. It also allowed them to provide feature-rich PCs without bogging down NPCs, something (as Phoenix pointed out) was a problem with 3e.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 01:47 PM
I agree with most of the post but not this part. NPCs being able to do something PCs can't do feels like cheating to me. Maybe the PCs need to be really high level, maybe they need some extremely rare component or whatever but I don't like the idea that the PCs just can't do it. If it's stuff that's inherently broken it should broken for NPCs to use too (supposedly intelligent NPCs having insanely powerful abilities but being too stupid to use them properly is rather annoying anyway).

EDIT: Maybe I should clarify that I'm cool with deities or similarly powerful NPCs doing stuff that's out of the party's reach. The above applies to NPCs that start out at more or less the same level (literally or figuratively) as the PCs.

I strongly oppose reifying classes and levels. That's a rabbit hole that I will not go down, one that breaks worlds. It means that you have to force tons of ultra-high-level NPCs into the setting, with all the damage that causes. Or you have to explain why no one else has thought of this obvious hack before (instead of just being clear that it's not something that they have access to). The mage you meet on the street is not a Wizard, even if he casts similar spells.

Unique people are unique. PCs have abilities that others don't, and vice versa. The game UI is a limited interface that has to meet the needs of the game, not a comprehensive access to all the in-universe functions. PC/NPC transparency is like having only public functions/fields in a program and letting everyone play around with all the implementation details. And that's a WTF of major proportions.

The game rules are not (and cannot be) the world's physical laws. Because the game rules are first and foremost game rules, adapted to make a fun, fluid interface. They're not adapted to being a coherent set of physical laws. They should reflect (in simplified, gamefied fashion) those physical laws, but they are not directly the physical laws. They're UI, not business logic. Forcing the in-universe interactions to all go through this external layer creates abject nonsense. And yes, I believe that 3e D&D creates abject nonsense of any setting it's tried on because of this.

PCs and NPCs mechanically serve different purposes within the narrative. Building one out of the pieces that the other uses (other than the most basic interactions) is both inefficient (you end up with lots of dangling pieces that clutter things up and slow down play, a cardinal sin in my opinion) and breaks settings. Mechanically, NPCs act as foils and counterparts to PCs. The mechanics only inform how they interact with PCs. They don't inform (directly) how they interact with the world in the absence of the PCs involvement, etc. 5e is not a simulation, and makes no attempts to be so. Trying to impose transparency breaks fundamental operating assumptions of 5e in so many ways that the whole system comes crashing down. Which is ok, because I find transparency to be at best a futile gesture and at worst highly destructive.

I will note that generally humanoid NPCs are bounded above by PC capabilities. That is, their abilities are mostly an incomplete subset of PC ones. There are things that they can do that PCs could theoretically do, if they were willing to devote years of time to preparing or happen to be lucky enough to be born with particular bloodlines, neither of which are valid in backstories. Or were willing to commit horrific acts that are also not allowed by my own personal house rules, involving human sacrifice and dealing with demons, both of which are "kill on sight" markers for any and all civilized NPCs due to world parameters. PCs that do those things become NPCs instantly, because I will not run a campaign with those as PCs. Full stop. There are a whole other group of "monster abilities" that monsters have due to their physiology, none of which are playable races. And another group of worldbuilding things that are effectively grandfathered in--the rules of the universe are not constant and have been changed (in large part to cut off "loopholes" that caused mass destruction in the past). Those changes allowed some things to continue to exist, but creating new instances is either not possible or requires completely rediscovering how it works in the new process. Which is a possible quest, but as of yet unknown.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 01:59 PM
The game UI is a limited interface that has to meet the needs of the game, not a comprehensive access to all the in-universe functions.

Agreed. I'll say it again. The dice reveal.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 02:14 PM
Agreed. I'll say it again. The dice reveal.

And not just the dice. All the abstractions are a game-oriented model acting as a window, translating between <world> and <real world>. That's all.

Accepting this also allows games to happen in worlds where the underlying physical laws are completely different than what we have. The UI takes care of translating player-layer actions into <world> terms and translating <world> events into player-layer results.

My world, for instance, does not have atoms, molecules, newtonian mechanics, or anything more modern than what a mid 12th (very rough estimate) century alchemist would understand. "Magic" is an intrinsic part of everything--there is no "mundane"/"magical" divide. There's a divide between spells and non-spells, but lots of things in the non-spell bucket are flat-out impossible on Earth without being particularly unusual on Quartus. The seasons aren't due to varying light intensity due to axial tilt (the world has none), but are due to the varying influence of the 12 elemental planes as the world orbits through their zones of influence. The water and oxygen cycle have nothing to do with photosynthesis (and photosynthesis per se doesn't exist), but are actively managed by elemental forces. Etc.

Yet it all makes sense and looks familiar because the laws are established so that the gross-level effects are basically the same as what would be obvious to a mid-medieval alchemist's tools, and the UI handles translating all the nit-picky details for use in the game.

BRC
2020-12-14, 02:24 PM
I mean, D&D 5e is already full of NPC's having abilities that PC's can't get, like Thugs in the Monster Manual show up with Pack Tactics. PC's can't get pack tactics. Thugs are not supposed to be especially skilled or dangerous or well trained, and Pack Tactics is a powerful ability.

That said, I think there IS something wrong with, for example, the example above where the random bandits had the ability to immobilize their enemies with arrows, something that the Ranger couldn't even try to do.

First, I think we need to separate abilities into two categories, I'm going to call them Dramatic and Subtle.


A Subtle ability is something like Pack Tactics, the "leadership" ability that a lot of NPC's have, the Gladiator NPC's "Brute" ability that causes them to roll an additional die on their weapon attacks, ect. These abilities are, and can be very powerful, but they exist mostly as back-end mechanics to represent something, or to achieve some mechanical outcome.

Damage is abstracted, and the point of the "Brute" ability is that the Gladiator is a skilled combatant who hits hard, not that there is some specific gladiator-secret sword technique that causes them to deal an extra d8 of damage with a sword, and if the Fighter was good enough they too would hit for 2d8 every time. They wanted an NPC statblock that dealt significant damage, but since damage is based on the weapons used, they needed to give the Gladiator the "Brute" ability, to bring it's damage in line with what they wanted for the statblock.
Similarly, stuff like the Knight's "Leadership" and the Thug's "Pack Tactics". The Thugs in a group are more dangerous if they swarm you, the Knight's tactical skill provides guidance for his allies. PC's don't have access to these exact abilities, not because PC's are not supposed to be good at swarming enemies, or good at giving orders in battle. You can play a tactician PC without the "Leadership" action, you just use other abilities. These abilities are just mechanical representations of abstracted traits that they wanted these NPCs to have. Gladiators hit hard, Knights can give commands, Thugs swarm opponents.


The second type of ability is the "Dramatic" ability, which isnt' an abstracted representation, but a concrete action. The Kraken Priest from Volos has a powerful spell attack called "Thunderous Touch". The nearest equivalent would be the cantrip "Shocking Grasp, but thundrous touch deals thunder damage, and hits harder. what's more, shocking grasp caps out at 4d8 at level 17, Thunderous Touch deals 5d10.
This is a Dramatic ability. There's no abstraction here, the Kraken Priest can touch you, and damage you with a powerful sonic attack. This is something PC's can't do by default. Similarly, the Kraken Priest has Voice of the Kraken, a powerful fear effect that has no non-spellcasting equivalent for PC's.

And I feel that this is fine, because the Kraken Priest isn't supposed to be an everyday person, they're supposed to be a cult leader with a unique connection to a certain type of entity. It could become a problem if a PC is playing a cleric who worships The Kraken, and gets the normal suite of Cleric powers, but you use the Kraken Priest statblock for another cleric of the same deity.



Unique Subtle abilities are fine, since those are hidden behind abstractions. Consider, there's no NPC equivalent of the Barbarian's Rage, where they get angry and take less damage. Damage is abstracted, and just as the Gladiator's "Brute" is a mechanical representation of the Gladiator's skill, the Barbarian's "Rage" is a mechanical representation of their durability and strength.


Unique Dramatic Abilities should be a "Thing". Pinning a foot to the ground with arrows is fine if it's done by the Bow Monks of the Sacred Arrow, or the Duke's Hounds, a squad of elite bounty hunters who specifically train in advanced techniques to capture their foes alive, and in that case if the PC's show interest, the DM might be inclined to give them a way to learn that technique, turning it into a treasure reward. However, you should avoid dramatic abilities coming across as a basic application of some skillset for everybody but the PC's.
Both because 1) It does feel a little unfair to see NPC's doing cool stuff, and then to be told "No, you can't do that Cool Stuff because it's not in the PHB", and 2) If you have a Cool Idea for an ability, it's a bit of a waste to just give it to some random bandits or whatever.

Quertus
2020-12-14, 02:28 PM
This, assuming that the setting writing and mechanics are average or above.

My personal breaking point is characters in a game being mechanically unable to do things that normal people in a setting do on a regular basis. You want the players to go "oh cool!" at some point in reading the setting or interacting with an npc. Great, good, fine, wonderful. You'd better make sure that the mechanics enable it.

This is especially important when you put something out in public for other people to use, because other people don't have your expectations on how stuff should work or your experience with the source material. They may well read things once and try to run it without cross checking or adjusting things.

Examples... Lets see...

StarFinder has level restricted gear for pcs but not for npcs, and pcs are restricted to buying level+2 gear at max. A quadcopter with a camera is a level 6 item in that game that an npc 8 year old with mommy's credit card can buy off the notInternet. First to third level pcs can't buy one, new or used, for any amount of money. They have to go beat up an 8 year old using their mind control spells, military grade armor and weapons, grenades, spaceship with nuclear missiles, etc.

Listening in on a 5e Eberron game I heard a dm say they were running things by the book, apparently referring to the default dmg assumption that magic items are rare and can't be bought. I think the player had asked to buy an everburning torch style lantern or something when they were literally in a shop for stuff like that and a npc had just bought a minor magic item before them.

A d&d 4e game I was in we got attacked by some low end human bandits. Some of the minions used an immobilize attack, literally a "they shoot an arrow that pins your shoe/foot to the ground" power. Our 10th level ranger wanted to do that. Nope. Not a ranger power so you can never do what a cannon fodder minion does several times each fight.


This is exactly the kinds of lack of coherence that makes me claim that 4e is not an RPG. It follows tactical skirmish war game logic, rather than RPG logic.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 02:39 PM
Unique Dramatic Abilities should be a "Thing". Pinning a foot to the ground with arrows is fine if it's done by the Bow Monks of the Sacred Arrow, or the Duke's Hounds, a squad of elite bounty hunters who specifically train in advanced techniques to capture their foes alive, and in that case if the PC's show interest, the DM might be inclined to give them a way to learn that technique, turning it into a treasure reward. However, you should avoid dramatic abilities coming across as a basic application of some skillset for everybody but the PC's.
Both because 1) It does feel a little unfair to see NPC's doing cool stuff, and then to be told "No, you can't do that Cool Stuff because it's not in the PHB", and 2) If you have a Cool Idea for an ability, it's a bit of a waste to just give it to some random bandits or whatever.

I basically agree with this (modulo the possibility of some weird edge cases that I'm not willing to nail down right now). That's why generic humanoid NPCs tend to have strict subsets of PC abilities (although sometimes muxed around with spell lists, since I use a different, more thematic, set of NPC spell lists). Unique NPCs get unique capabilities. And they're not necessarily hard out-of-reach, but they represent things that this particular NPC has learned to do that most of his fellows can't. If I were running 3e, they'd be custom feats.

As for the exact 4e example, I do have to push back a bit. With hard classes, you'd expect that NPCs (who don't share that class) would have different abilities. That NPC is not a ranger-classed-creature. Thus, his ability set and the Ranger ability set are disjoint. Now should you likely homebrew a "pinning shot" power? I probably would. But just the bare disjoint-ness of the power sets doesn't concern me at all. After all, your Fighter buddy can do things your Ranger can't--how is that any different?

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 03:09 PM
A Subtle ability is something like Pack Tactics, the "leadership" ability that a lot of NPC's have, the Gladiator NPC's "Brute" ability that causes them to roll an additional die on their weapon attacks, ect. These abilities are, and can be very powerful, but they exist mostly as back-end mechanics to represent something, or to achieve some mechanical outcome.

Part of how I interpret the mechanics (and describe my interpretations to my players) is that it's not so cut and dried. A PC at my table may well indeed have a "leadership" skill of some sort. Just not one that's potent enough to matter mechanically. A fighter doesn't suddenly realize he can hit twice with his sword (at 5th level). He probably was swinging twice before. Maybe even both were hitting once in a while, which we at the table interpreted as a crit. Maybe not. It's up to the player. If my fighter player gets a crit, I have no problem with her saying her PC actually struck twice. Mechanically, no, it was one hit, but in-fiction? Sure, double-tap, if that's more fun.

I assume most, if not all, spellcaster PCs are test-casting "prototype" versions of spells they're not high enough to cast mechanically in the levels leading up to the point when they can (maybe during downtime or travel). The druid at my table wildshaped at 1st level when she had a bad dream.

Xervous
2020-12-14, 03:17 PM
Good mechanics won’t save a godawful setting or vice versa. Given the choice I’ll take positives in both categories.

Unique mechanics are desired only when they add something to better interface with the setting. Tracking encumbrance is generally silly in a locked manor murder mystery. Rules for long term intrigue gambits are irrelevant on an icy, post apocalyptic tundra where the largest sentient gathering you’re liable to run into wants to eat you.

A class or feature for capturing the mechanics of something iconic in the setting is what’s desired. If the setting is uninspiring I’ll either skip the content entirely or salvage the fun spinning parts from the work of modern art.

Bland mechanics on the other hand can be fine alongside a wonderful world. This is mostly what lite systems are like. With a good plot and setting the rules may be more of an afterthought. Though I will admit it’s a slippery slope that often sends me leaping towards full on free form.

Telok
2020-12-14, 03:49 PM
As a GM I see the value in NPCs being built using a separate set of templates from PCs. I don't want to manage multiple NPCs each with the complexity of a PC.

Yes. I completely agree with you. And that wasn't what I was talking about at all.

Try this: Say your setting has a 4 armed species/race that's also a pc species/race choice. The setting has these guys as the pereminent wizards of the setting because 4 arms lets them cast 2 spells at a time. Of course pcs can't be allowed that because of balance. Sucks to be you pc wizard wannabe, all npc wizards will always be better than you because they're the same race as you.

Or you put in a bunch of specially trained ninjas who get to use smoke bombs to vanish. Famous for it, works great, works all the time. A pc joins the ninja and gets training but it's an action to use a smoke bomb and it just gives a +5 on a 1d60 stealth roll (yeah I saw a homebrew 1d60 system once, it was 1d20 with all numbers x2 or x4) and it doesn't even work because hiding is also an action and you can't take two actions a round. Nobody, not pcs or npcs, can do what your setting stuff says because the mechanics for it are full of fail.

Those sorts of things are what I'm taking about. Giving 2nd level pcs a spaceship with nuclear missiles but they can't buy a quadcopter because they aren't high enough level. That sort of jank.

Batcathat
2020-12-14, 03:53 PM
I strongly oppose reifying classes and levels. That's a rabbit hole that I will not go down, one that breaks worlds. It means that you have to force tons of ultra-high-level NPCs into the setting, with all the damage that causes. Or you have to explain why no one else has thought of this obvious hack before (instead of just being clear that it's not something that they have access to).

That's one solution. The other is to not give NPCs any abilities that the PCs couldn't, at least theoretically, duplicate. Obviously an average adventurer won't be able to match the powers or resources of an emperor of a continent, a thousands of years old wizard or the high priest of the top god. But if a PC end up in a position or a power level justifying it, I don't think a GM should go "Nah, that's just for NPCs".



The mage you meet on the street is not a Wizard, even if he casts similar spells.

Sure, I'm not saying that an NPC and a PC have to be mechanically identical (though I usually prefer it, both as a player and GM) just that the NPC mage shouldn't be capable of doing magic a PC couldn't even theoretically replicate.


Unique people are unique. PCs have abilities that others don't, and vice versa. The game UI is a limited interface that has to meet the needs of the game, not a comprehensive access to all the in-universe functions. PC/NPC transparency is like having only public functions/fields in a program and letting everyone play around with all the implementation details. And that's a WTF of major proportions.

The game rules are not (and cannot be) the world's physical laws. Because the game rules are first and foremost game rules, adapted to make a fun, fluid interface. They're not adapted to being a coherent set of physical laws. They should reflect (in simplified, gamefied fashion) those physical laws, but they are not directly the physical laws. They're UI, not business logic. Forcing the in-universe interactions to all go through this external layer creates abject nonsense.

I see your point. But that doesn't mean the in-universe abilities can't be the same, even if the out-of-universe mechanics aren't.


I will note that generally humanoid NPCs are bounded above by PC capabilities. That is, their abilities are mostly an incomplete subset of PC ones. There are things that they can do that PCs could theoretically do, if they were willing to devote years of time to preparing or happen to be lucky enough to be born with particular bloodlines, neither of which are valid in backstories. Or were willing to commit horrific acts that are also not allowed by my own personal house rules, involving human sacrifice and dealing with demons, both of which are "kill on sight" markers for any and all civilized NPCs due to world parameters. PCs that do those things become NPCs instantly, because I will not run a campaign with those as PCs. Full stop.

Sure, not every ability is easy to come by or even possible under all circumstances and I agree that PCs should face the consequences of their actions (I don't think I would turn a PC to NPC because I didn't agree with their behavior, but I can see why someone would).


There are a whole other group of "monster abilities" that monsters have due to their physiology, none of which are playable races. And another group of worldbuilding things that are effectively grandfathered in--the rules of the universe are not constant and have been changed (in large part to cut off "loopholes" that caused mass destruction in the past). Those changes allowed some things to continue to exist, but creating new instances is either not possible or requires completely rediscovering how it works in the new process. Which is a possible quest, but as of yet unknown.

Sure, I'm not saying PCs should be able to do literally anything any NPC can do. Just that they shouldn't be limited by the fact that they're PCs. If the human mage NPC can cast a spell, the human mage PC should be able to do so as well if there's not a very good reason why not and if a living PC can't use an ability because it's only for the undead, the non-undead NPCs shouldn't use it either.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 03:55 PM
Yes. I completely agree with you. And that wasn't what I was talking about at all.

Try this: Say your setting has a 4 armed species/race that's also a pc species/race choice. The setting has these guys as the pereminent wizards of the setting because 4 arms lets them cast 2 spells at a time. Of course pcs can't be allowed that because of balance. Sucks to be you pc wizard wannabe, all npc wizards will always be better than you because they're the same race as you.

Or you put in a bunch of specially trained ninjas who get to use smoke bombs to vanish. Famous for it, works great, works all the time. A pc joins the ninja and gets training but it's an action to use a smoke bomb and it just gives a +5 on a 1d60 stealth roll (yeah I saw a homebrew 1d60 system once, it was 1d20 with all numbers x2 or x4) and it doesn't even work because hiding is also an action and you can't take two actions a round. Nobody, not pcs or npcs, can do what your setting stuff says because the mechanics for it are full of fail.

Those sorts of things are what I'm taking about. Giving 2nd level pcs a spaceship with nuclear missiles but they can't buy a quadcopter because they aren't high enough level. That sort of jank.

Yeah. That sort of thing I can agree is annoying. It's one reason I don't tend to tie things to races directly (among other bigger reasons), especially if they're humanoids and likely to be/become PC races. And I'd capture that "training as a ninja" thing as taking rogue levels (letting them hide as a bonus action) and the smoke bombs would be a separate thing. Or give the training in using the bombs quicker as a boon/custom-quest-granted feat. So anyone could use them, but ninjas can use them better.

I actually just statted up a "magic" item that was a satchel[1] of smoke bombs. Doesn't actually give a bonus to Stealth, just creates heavy obscurement (which fades to light obscurement). Which lets you hide, plus breaks line of sight (important for many spells).

[1] Easier to make an item that represents crafting a bunch at a time, rather than trying to be more granular with crafting rules and pricing, etc. Basically, the formula yields 7 bombs at a time; if you find them, they're in units of 1d6+1 (representing possible use since resupply).

Telok
2020-12-14, 04:15 PM
Yeah. That sort of thing I can agree is annoying. It's one reason I don't tend to tie things to races directly (among other bigger reasons), especially if they're humanoids and likely to be/become PC races. And I'd capture that "training as a ninja" thing as taking rogue levels (letting them hide as a bonus action) and the smoke bombs would be a separate thing. Or give the training in using the bombs quicker as a boon/custom-quest-granted feat. So anyone could use them, but ninjas can use them better.

Yeah, that's fitting the mechanics to the setting. Putting in a unique mechanical wiget to enable what the setting says ought to work. Note that my example didn't use d&d 5e, similar things have happened in 4e and in 3e under some dms.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 04:47 PM
Try this: Say your setting has a 4 armed species/race that's also a pc species/race choice. The setting has these guys as the pereminent wizards of the setting because 4 arms lets them cast 2 spells at a time. Of course pcs can't be allowed that because of balance. Sucks to be you pc wizard wannabe, all npc wizards will always be better than you because they're the same race as you.

So sorta like how in D&D 5e, PC Goblins have Fury of the Small while NPC Goblins don't? But I guess in reverse...


Or you put in a bunch of specially trained ninjas who get to use smoke bombs to vanish. Famous for it, works great, works all the time. A pc joins the ninja and gets training but it's an action to use a smoke bomb and it just gives a +5 on a 1d60 stealth roll (yeah I saw a homebrew 1d60 system once, it was 1d20 with all numbers x2 or x4) and it doesn't even work because hiding is also an action and you can't take two actions a round. Nobody, not pcs or npcs, can do what your setting stuff says because the mechanics for it are full of fail.

I mean that just sounds like bad design. You would think a feature that allows effective use of the smoke bomb would also allow the user to hide using the same action as throwing the bomb. Otherwise how are the NPCs doing it? Also, if the GM designed the ninja group in a way that allowed PCs to learn its secrets, I would expect the PC to be able to effectively use those features. Was this something that happened in a game? Surely it's not an official thing, is it?

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 04:56 PM
So sorta like how in D&D 5e, PC Goblins have Fury of the Small while NPC Goblins don't? But I guess in reverse...


One specific thing from 5e is that the official line (in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything) is that PCs are not ordinary/"average" members of their race. That is, you cannot (or should not) assume that, because PC!orc has feature X, NPC!orc has an identical feature X. Including ability score increases.

Now some things should (IMO) be assumed--an aarocokra darn well better have wings and be able to fly, NPC or PC. A dragonborn should be able to breathe <energy type>, PC or NPC. A drow should[1] be sensitive to sunlight, PC or NPC. But you may not be able to assume that all high elves know a wizard cantrip--that might just be something that PC!high elves have. It's not ruled out for NPCs, and NPC high elves may have other features that PCs don't have. But it's not assumed by default.

[1] in traditional settings at least.

EggKookoo
2020-12-14, 05:15 PM
One specific thing from 5e is that the official line (in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything) is that PCs are not ordinary/"average" members of their race. That is, you cannot (or should not) assume that, because PC!orc has feature X, NPC!orc has an identical feature X. Including ability score increases.

Right. I think Telok's argument hinges on the reverse. That NPC specimens can do a thing that PC specimens can't. Fury of the Small is ambiguous. IMO the Goblin within the fiction doesn't know it has the feature and doesn't invoke it consciously. The player does it, basically granting the PC a damage bonus. Kind of like spending Inspiration or rolling hit dice during a short rest.

I'm sure examples exist, but I'm having trouble calling to mind a case where in official 5e D&D a PC can't do something that the NPC version of the same creature can, where it's not one of those ambiguous features like FotS.

Duff
2020-12-14, 05:18 PM
It is entirely dependent on the setting. Some settings have their entire identity wrapped around some central concept, so you need to model that with reasonable fidelity, if you don't want there to be a weird disconnect between how the setting is said to work and what your players are actually doing.

But, at the same time, many established game systems give you a massive glut of character options already. More possible games exist within "vanilla" D&D design space than anyone is playing or even willing to play. The way to get to your desired setting is to cherry pick the Hell out of those options, not adding more.

Really good point. You can get as much identity from removing options as from adding them with a lot less work.
So that's time you can spend on creating a rich tapestry of people, cultures, maps and events and the stories you want to tell there

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-14, 05:29 PM
Really good point. You can get as much identity from removing options as from adding them with a lot less work.
So that's time you can spend on creating a rich tapestry of people, cultures, maps and events and the stories you want to tell there

In general yes. But one of the specific challenges I set for myself with this setting was to see if I could make a coherent, interesting kitchen sink setting with as many of the 1st-party, setting-neutral player options included as possible.

So far there's a few that I can't fit--
* A few races (most of which I know where they are, they just haven't been discovered yet to be available for play)
* A couple of the most-recently published subclasses and feats. Anything involving guns (actual firearms) won't fit due to other high-level design decisions. And stuff that relies on the stars will require massive changes due to the nature of the stars. Plus, a few of them were just, IMO, overtuned to a stupid degree.

Other than that, I have a place for almost everything. Often a much reduced one--there are a grand total of ~200 kobolds known to exist[1]. And many of the other races are small in number and local.

[1] there are more, but they're independently created and only distantly related, plus they're on a continent no one from the "main" continent has been to in centuries.

Tanarii
2020-12-14, 08:53 PM
As a DM - Completely unimportant unless they are necessary to support the campaign theme. In fact, they detract unless they directly impact the theme of the setting.

If Draconians are important enemies, I wast draconian stats, not Dragonborn NPC stats. If avoiding degrading sanity until you lose control of the PC permanently is a theme, I want a sanity score and a bunch of hard rules about it. If horror or survival is important I want PCs to be much weaker than normal (or enemies tougher) and built in ways to quickly replace them. That kind of thing.

Simple example: If I was running a FR one shot, I wouldn't include any SCAG material, as bad singers and the like aren't critical to the theme. When running eberron, I would probably need a good artificer class and rules for magic item creation, since they are central to the theme. (Ie not the 5e class or rules.)

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-12-15, 01:06 AM
To jump back a bit to before the transparency debate:


The most popular D&D setting, Forgotten Realms, is also the most generic one, so I don't think unique mechanics matter all that much.

This is a pretty ironic statement, because flavor-wise Forgotten Realms isn't the most generic one at all--Greyhawk is more generic both in the sense of more directly borrowing stuff from the real world (cultures and continents and such) and other fiction (spells and items and such) and in the sense of being more "vanilla D&D" in that it diverges less from the default setting assumptions in the core books--and, more relevantly, mechanically Forgotten Realms is far from generic because it has tons of FR-specific mechanics across multiple editions.

FR has unique kits, nonweapon proficiencies, classes, spells, feats, prestige classes, and more for every nation, organization, race, religion, and other aspect of the world. Red Wizards aren't just normal wizards who wear red robes all the time, they have their own kit/PrC, several supporting kits/PrCs for various Thayan things, and a bevy of unique (and jealously hoarded) spells and magic items. Priests of Shar aren't just normal clerics who have access to certain darkness- and evil-related spheres/domains, they have a bunch of kits/PrCs and NWPs/feats that are unique to the Church of Shar and their own entire Shadow Weave to play with. And so on and so forth.

That's my standard for mechanical uniqueness: if there's a particular flavor element that's unique to the setting, and it has an impact that can't be justified by simply reflavoring an existing doodad, there must be unique mechanics for it, similar to what Tanarii said. Krynnish wizards' school-specialization-by-robe-color schtick can simply be a slight reflavoring of wizards where certain specialist wizards are only admitted to certain Orders, but the fact that their magic varies in strength based on the phase of the moon cannot and needs to have associated mechanics. Eberronian clerics' ability to cast divine spells despite gods not being proven to exist can simply be a reflavoring of deity-less clerics of a philosophy or cause, but Eberron airships (which are powered by bound elementals that can escape, disobey, be killed, etc. rather than generic levitation enchantments) cannot simply be reflavored Halruaan skyships and need to have their own mechanics. And so on.


That does somewhat interact with the issue of PC/NPC transparency. If a setting declares that "Organization A is composed of people of Profession B that can all do Action C to achieve Outcome D, and that's why Setting Element X is Y!" but then players who join Organization A or interact with members of Profession B want to achieve Outcome D and the DM looks in the setting book to see how Action C should be adjudicated and the setting goes "...er, about that? Yeah, totally arbitrary background flavor, we know it would be useful if they could Action C right about now but you'll have to make that up yourself, sorry" then that's a pretty big issue with verisimilitude on the player end and unnecessary extra effort on the DM and makes me wonder why I'm using that setting element instead of making up my own thing. It doesn't mean that you have to necessarily build PCs and NPCs identically, but it should mean that if there are NPC Red Wizards in the setting then PCs who join the Red Wizards should be able do full-on Red Wizard-y things as well, and if it's impossible for them to join the Red Wizards it should be for much better reasons than "Because they're an NPC faction."

And if the setting instead goes "What? Oh, no no, that should only be used to handwave Setting Element X, PCs shouldn't be allowed to ask Organization A to do the thing that we say they do all the time!", as many 4e setting elements and lots of various third-party 3e setting splatbooks did, then that's straight-up designer laziness and/or incompetence. Making various powerful and/or setting-shaping effects NPC-only toys are one of the hallmarks of bad design: either it's balanced/reasonable/etc. for NPCs and so it should be accessible to PCs, or it's not balanced/reasonable/etc. for PCs and so NPCs shouldn't get those toys either. Even Gygax put powerful and plot-altering spells on the standard magic-user and cleric spell lists instead of chickening out and making them NPC-only or relegating them to pure flavor and DM fiat.

Cluedrew
2020-12-16, 08:30 AM
Very important, to the point I'm happy to switch systems for different settings. I realise that is an extreme but for larger jumps than from one action fantasy setting to another (and sometimes even then) I think a change in base rules can be called for.

Duff
2020-12-17, 06:41 PM
But one of the specific challenges I set for myself with this setting was to see if I could make a coherent, interesting kitchen sink setting with as many of the 1st-party, setting-neutral player options included as possible.

It might be useful and I'm curious; What will make this play differently than Greyhawk?
Note that "It won't, there's different countries and history because I wanted to make up a world and play in it" is a perfectly valid answer. But if you want it to feel distinct, in what way do you want it different?
Adding a mechanical feature would be a way to make your otherwise generic homebrew feel different - and that's also fine if that's what you're going for.

But if you want a genuinely distinct setting, use the mechanics to support the differences.
You want magic to feel Important? Add it to how the villages do things. Make "The Queen"s magical talent a defining feature of how the kingdom goes and a topic of discussion. And then you want mechanics about magic for every character

Or if you want to have a theme of investigation and mystery then you write your mysteries, and have mechanics to support that

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-17, 07:37 PM
It might be useful and I'm curious; What will make this play differently than Greyhawk?
Note that "It won't, there's different countries and history because I wanted to make up a world and play in it" is a perfectly valid answer. But if you want it to feel distinct, in what way do you want it different?
Adding a mechanical feature would be a way to make your otherwise generic homebrew feel different - and that's also fine if that's what you're going for.

But if you want a genuinely distinct setting, use the mechanics to support the differences.
You want magic to feel Important? Add it to how the villages do things. Make "The Queen"s magical talent a defining feature of how the kingdom goes and a topic of discussion. And then you want mechanics about magic for every character

Or if you want to have a theme of investigation and mystery then you write your mysteries, and have mechanics to support that

Short answer--Greyhawk (and FR) are both completely incoherent settings. They have a bunch of things thrown together because they were cool, with all the connections glued in where they were needed. There's no reason why things are the way they are. Plus decades of earlier-edition cruft means that lots of things don't make any sense with 5e (my chosen system)'s mechanics. That irritates the living daylights out of me. The races are all monocultural--in fact culture only matters for humans. And the mono-racial kingdoms/nations generally bugs me. Plus, FR's names are laughable. :smallbiggrin:

Dawn of Hope started out as a generic "4e Points of Light but with the identifying marks removed". After one group I ended up transitioning to 5e and reset the world. It's evolved since then.

One goal is to try to stick as close to the "stock" mechanics as I could while building the lore up from the ground to support and explain those default mechanics. I want a world where all the races, all the magics, all the classes, etc have a place that fits. Which of course did involve throwing away 99% of the planar structure and all of the gods and all the racial lore[2]. And reworking even the very nature of the gods. So it's not just the map and the nations that are different--the underlying in-universe metaphysics are very different.

For one thing, there's no permanent afterlife. For anyone, really. For another, the gods are all "promoted" mortals chosen to be the middle-management/PR department of the universe. For a third, the entire universe is the size of the inner solar system (~4 AU in diameter)--no infinite planes. Everything you know about planar history and the nature of the planes is wrong. All done so that when people ask "why does X work that way" I can have an answer that meshes with the rest of the world.

Fundamental themes involve
* Order vs chaos; stasis vs change
* free will and consequences
* the power of sacrifice [1]
* no free lunch--everything has a cost. This is especially true of immortality--all the "standard" ways of doing so have substantial costs. But I know how the underpinnings and energy flows go.
* What if medieval alchemists were right about the physics of the world? As a physicist, this is an intriguing exercise. Magic is built into the very structure of the world; no atoms, no molecules, no conservation laws. Elementals are responsible for all of the natural cycles; photosynthesis isn't a thing, neither is evolution (something much more Lamarkian holds, but with souls).
* Dreams shaping reality in some sense.

But the big reason was that I wanted a setting where I knew all the underpinnings. So that when someone asks "what happens if..." I can answer with something that fits the rest of the world and feels natural. And if they say "hey, what about XYZ", I can often find a way to make that doable and fitting. It's a living world, shaped very strongly by the actions of the parties that play through it. Currently I've had over a dozen individual parties (so likely 30-some-odd people) play in it; all have left visible traces. Which is a major draw for my parties--I don't get murder hobos because everyone knows that their actions will stick.

I personally prefer the kind of Heroic Adventures that 5e D&D handles pretty much stock without much modification, so the mechanical differences at the system (as opposed to content) level are tiny and I can basically just play with the default settings and match the tone of the world. I'm fortunate in that "generic" is fine with me, as long as there's new things to discover. Much of the world doesn't get built in any detail until a party goes there, so for me, playing in the world is discovering all the things that I didn't know were there until I said them.

[1] there are narrative mechanics around sacrifice, but I've never promoted them to player-option levels because they're basically ad hoc "desperate gambles" or are plot device things. But smaller-scale sacrifices (ie "what will you choose? What will you sacrifice to get there?") forms a large part of the setting's stories.
[2] ie there's only one goblinoid race. Humans were created from hobgoblins, as were orcs. As a note, the first real "gods" appeared only about 4k years before present, long after most other things. And many many others.

Tanarii
2020-12-17, 08:44 PM
It might be useful and I'm curious; What will make this play differently than Greyhawk?


Given that greyhawk was an OD&D/AD&D setting, running a 5e home setting by core mechanics is different mechanics. :smallamused:

For example, I couldn't play Mystara when they converted it to 2e. It felt drastically different. And I couldn't play 4e Darksun. And I couldn't play 3e Oriental Adventures.

So I guess I revise my answer, mechanics is very important. I couldn't play Forbidden Lands (Free League publishing) setting with 5e for example. Although it would probably work wonderfully with BECMI.

What I don't care about is homebrew races or classes for a homebrew setting.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-12-17, 10:57 PM
Short answer--Greyhawk (and FR) are both completely incoherent settings. They have a bunch of things thrown together because they were cool, with all the connections glued in where they were needed. There's no reason why things are the way they are.

One thing I'd point out is that the real world is completely thematically incoherent with tons of things thrown together for no apparent reason and justified only after the fact (if at all).

A lot of the verisimilitude in D&D settings like Greyhawk and FR, novel settings like Middle Earth and ASoIaF, and similar is that there are lots of quirks, out-of-place things, seeming juxtapositions, and so forth that lend them a "lived-in" feel, and that can seem random or pointless and thus "unrealistic" on the surface when in fact it's those slightly-illogical aspects that are the most realistic. The thing where Forgotten Realms has 10+ calendars with different starting years and year-naming conventions instead of a single unified system, for instance, can seem like superfluous flavor text and/or lack of writer coordination when basically all the players just use DR, but that disagreement mimics our real-world setup with its several different calendars and can add a nice touch of realism if a dating discrepancy or alternate year name comes up in-game.


I want a world where all the races, all the magics, all the classes, etc have a place that fits.

In my experience, one of the worst things you can do when creating a setting is going the "a place for everything and everything in its place" route--whether with classes (e.g. all arcane classes have distinct existence and social recognition in-game because people calling Warlocks and Artificers "sorcerers" is "confusing") or flavor (e.g. the year is exactly 336 days long and consists of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days because leap years and months of different lengths and such are "messy") or cosmology (e.g. the planes are boiled down to World, Faerie World, Emo World, Heaven, Hell, and Place Where Teleportation Happens because having multiple similar planes is "redundant") or whatever--because the overt artificiality can be pretty bad for immersion once players notice it and too much rigidity can leave little wiggle room for improvisation later if you want to throw in a one-off something-or-other that would be cool for the campaign but doesn't quite fit the overarching structure.

Now, that's not to say that any of the specific details you've laid out about your setting are bad--far from it; I'm getting a bit of a Mystara-meets-Eberron vibe, and that's right up my alley--but I am saying that if you start off designing a setting with the sentiment that "The existing settings are slapdash and nonsensical but I'm going to build something that Makes Sense!" then that can definitely be counterproductive when actually running the setting later.


Given that greyhawk was an OD&D/AD&D setting, running a 5e home setting by core mechanics is different mechanics. :smallamused:

For example, I couldn't play Mystara when they converted it to 2e. It felt drastically different. And I couldn't play 4e Darksun. And I couldn't play 3e Oriental Adventures.

So I guess I revise my answer, mechanics is very important. I couldn't play Forbidden Lands (Free League publishing) setting with 5e for example. Although it would probably work wonderfully with BECMI.

What I don't care about is homebrew races or classes for a homebrew setting.

I don't go nearly as far as you do--I'm happy to play or run AD&D setting material converted to 3e and in my experience you can certainly run 3e Greyhawk with a very OD&D Greyhawk feel given judicious choice of allowed classes, common monsters, campaign themes, and so forth--but I definitely agree that the mechanics used can have a big impact on how well a setting "works" and any setting that's especially tightly-coupled to a specific edition's mechanics (like Mystara and BECMI or Eberron and 3e) is difficult if not impossible to get right when ported to another system or edition (case in point: 4e Eberron).

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-17, 11:19 PM
One thing I'd point out is that the real world is completely thematically incoherent with tons of things thrown together for no apparent reason and justified only after the fact (if at all).

A lot of the verisimilitude in D&D settings like Greyhawk and FR, novel settings like Middle Earth and ASoIaF, and similar is that there are lots of quirks, out-of-place things, seeming juxtapositions, and so forth that lend them a "lived-in" feel, and that can seem random or pointless and thus "unrealistic" on the surface when in fact it's those slightly-illogical aspects that are the most realistic. The thing where Forgotten Realms has 10+ calendars with different starting years and year-naming conventions instead of a single unified system, for instance, can seem like superfluous flavor text and/or lack of writer coordination when basically all the players just use DR, but that disagreement mimics our real-world setup with its several different calendars and can add a nice touch of realism if a dating discrepancy or alternate year name comes up in-game.


That kind of "not making sense" is fine. Having eleventy-dozen super-powerful NPCs who don't do much, plus gods that get involved everywhere...sort of, at the convenience of the current writers, etc. Basically, the entire cosmology and cosmogeny and racial lore of FR (especially) are internally inconsistent. They are purely artificial "box checking".

I feel no verisimilitude in FR or Greyhawk. Because it's obviously all a shallow mask without underlying structure. It's a bunch of things put into a salad bowl. It couldn't be a real world, because it all contradicts itself. Not just in-universe, but the official lore. Plus the relics of systems past have left weird marks on things.

My world isn't designed to make sense in-universe--much of it is mysterious and contradictory, with what is known by one group not matching what is known by another. But what I don't want are 100k overlapping gods that are all true and global. Or dozens of identical races all over the place, with no thought of how each one came about. Or the rigid "this is an elven kingdom, just like every other stinking elven kingdom. That's a dwarven kingdom--no matter where you go, all dwarven kingdoms are basically identical. Only humans are allowed to differ or have mixed-race nations" policy that pervades the whole structure.

More than that, the planar structure is the pits. I HATE the great wheel with a passion. It's simultaneously too big and too small. It throws around "infinity"...and then only has really tiny areas that matter and fully acts not only finite, but downright tiny and samey. Each plane is basically homogenous--one place is identical to any other place. And they're all horrible places, fixed into rigid alignments that don't even make sense in 5e.

But I'm biased.



In my experience, one of the worst things you can do when creating a setting is going the "a place for everything and everything in its place" route--whether with classes (e.g. all arcane classes have distinct existence and social recognition in-game because people calling Warlocks and Artificers "sorcerers" is "confusing") or flavor (e.g. the year is exactly 336 days long and consists of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days because leap years and months of different lengths and such are "messy") or cosmology (e.g. the planes are boiled down to World, Faerie World, Emo World, Heaven, Hell, and Place Where Teleportation Happens because having multiple similar planes is "redundant") or whatever--because the overt artificiality can be pretty bad for immersion once players notice it and too much rigidity can leave little wiggle room for improvisation later if you want to throw in a one-off something-or-other that would be cool for the campaign but doesn't quite fit the overarching structure.

Now, that's not to say that any of the specific details you've laid out about your setting are bad--far from it; I'm getting a bit of a Mystara-meets-Eberron vibe, and that's right up my alley--but I am saying that if you start off designing a setting with the sentiment that "The existing settings are slapdash and nonsensical but I'm going to build something that Makes Sense!" then that can definitely be counterproductive when actually running the setting later.


I think you're going further than I intended. I want to know why there are sorcerers and wizards--what makes them different in universe? How does druidic magic work differently than clerical magic? How does a barbarian's Rage work? Where do all these races come from, without active creator gods? Why are <those> so similar to <these>? I don't reify classes or levels. I do have convenient year/month/week lengths, but only because the being behind the whole thing is obsessed with the number 4 and its multiples (that theme runs throughout the entire setting--9 is a wicked number (spoken as 8 + 1) because 8 is holy because there were 8 + 1 primordials and one rebelled. Four seasons. Four planets. Etc.)

The theme of Order vs Chaos is a big one here--the universe is incredibly ordered. On purpose. Because the primordial entity embodying Change rebelled "before the beginning" and was locked away in the Abyss, both prisoner and jailor. That's changed recently, so things are moving. How the world reacts to that change and how it changes is one theme I'm exploring (through the characters). PCs are "catalysts of change" inevitably--wherever they go, things change in one direction or another.

My planes basically boil down to
* Mortal plane (ie material). This is where all energy comes from, from the growth and dreams of mortals (intelligent or not).
* Astral. This is where the Great Mechanism that acts as the clockwork behind the universe moves the energy from the Mortal plane around. Here live gods and devils, angels and all sorts of ascended and non-physical creatures.
* Elemental x 12. One for each month, 3 per element ("pure" plus admixtures with the elements on either side). The seasons come from the varying influence of these elemental planes as the worlds orbit through the space they dominate.
* 4-fold Shadow: A liminal "lubricant" plane between the Mortal and the others, a land of bright mania and a land of quiet dolor. Many of the fey visit here, and this is the temporary afterlife for all spirits.
The Waste, a contaminated area touched by the Abyss, hunting ground of demons.
* The Abyss: a pocket "cyst" that orbits in a cloverleaf pattern, inhabited originally by the Nameless and his Broken Concepts; now with the Nameless and most of the Concepts gone, demons have taken up residence. At its core the Oblivion Gate, a wound in reality that spawns anti-life.

All bounded by the Crystal Sphere, hedging out the Dark Beyond and the Awakener that exists beyond.

Without fixed alignment (one thing I refuse to include), I had to decide what makes an angel? How are devils, angels, and demons different? What is the role of the gods in this order? How did this all come about?

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-12-18, 01:06 AM
That kind of "not making sense" is fine. Having eleventy-dozen super-powerful NPCs who don't do much, plus gods that get involved everywhere...sort of, at the convenience of the current writers, etc. Basically, the entire cosmology and cosmogeny and racial lore of FR (especially) are internally inconsistent. They are purely artificial "box checking".

I feel no verisimilitude in FR or Greyhawk. Because it's obviously all a shallow mask without underlying structure. It's a bunch of things put into a salad bowl. It couldn't be a real world, because it all contradicts itself. Not just in-universe, but the official lore. Plus the relics of systems past have left weird marks on things.

My world isn't designed to make sense in-universe--much of it is mysterious and contradictory, with what is known by one group not matching what is known by another. But what I don't want are 100k overlapping gods that are all true and global. Or dozens of identical races all over the place, with no thought of how each one came about. Or the rigid "this is an elven kingdom, just like every other stinking elven kingdom. That's a dwarven kingdom--no matter where you go, all dwarven kingdoms are basically identical. Only humans are allowed to differ or have mixed-race nations" policy that pervades the whole structure.

See, you're positioning that stuff as being opposed to what Greyhawk and FR do with their setting elements when they're both doing basically the same thing. To focus on FR since obviously that's your more hated of the two:

1) There is indeed in-setting reasoning for when and why powerful NPCs and gods do or don't get involved: the former are generally parts of factions locked in many-way cold wars with other factions and only get involved when Realms-Shaking Events or doomsday plots or suchlike are in the offing, the latter don't get directly involved at all except during specific shakeups in the divine landscape.

2) The gods are explicitly neither "global" (no two gods with overlapping portfolios can be part of the same pantheon, so Lathander isn't widely worshiped in Mulhorand and Horus-Re isn't widely worshiped in the Moonsea) nor "true" (there are lots of gods who may or may not be aspects or reincarnations of other gods and several heresies about the nature of various gods floating around).

3) All the elven and dwarven kingdoms are fairly distinct from one another (the mostly-elven Earlann and Cormanthor and the mostly-dwarven Delzoun and Ammarindar were at least as different from each other as the mostly-human Tethyr and Amn are), and all the old human empires (Netheril, Imaskar, Narfell, Unther...) were were 90+% human just like any of the nonhuman nations were 90+% some other race.


More than that, the planar structure is the pits. I HATE the great wheel with a passion. It's simultaneously too big and too small. It throws around "infinity"...and then only has really tiny areas that matter and fully acts not only finite, but downright tiny and samey. Each plane is basically homogenous--one place is identical to any other place. And they're all horrible places, fixed into rigid alignments that don't even make sense in 5e.

But I'm biased.

The Wheel is conceptually infinite (intervening space that doesn't exist until you walk there, trips that take a fixed amount of time regardless of your mode of travel, a city a finite distance away atop an infinite spire, etc.), not physically infinite, as a deliberate indicator that they don't operate on Material Plane physics. And having bunches of emptiness around the edges is hardly a problem--campaign setting worlds are finite balls of earth and water in an infinite Material Plane, but you never see people complain that only one planet out of bazillions matter, do you?

And the planes are "basically homogeneous" compared to Material Plane worlds only because a given campaign setting gets a half-dozen books fleshing out all the nooks and crannies since groups are expected to spend lots of time there whereas a given plane gets a few pages and a handful of sample locations and plot hooks in one or two planes-focused books and expects a DM to flesh out the rest since groups are expected to make short jaunts to any given one. Any random Material Plane world you visit via spelljammer is gonna be as bare-bones as a MotP Inner Plane writeup, if not totally randomly-generated with no official details at all beyond perhaps a name, and there's been more lore written about the Abyss or Nine Hells alone than about entire smaller settings like Ravenloft or Jakandor.


So when you talk about whether a "well-written, coherent, artfully-done world" can compensate for a dearth of new mechanics, I think you're vastly downplaying the writing, coherence, and depth of the existing settings that provide all that in addition to a bunch of mechanical options. Sure, a homebrew setting benefits from things like a single author with a singular vision, not needing to support novel lines, and such when compared to published settings, but the gap is on the order of Wheel of Time vs. Game of Thrones, not Lord of the Rings vs. Eragon.


I think you're going further than I intended. I want to know why there are sorcerers and wizards--what makes them different in universe? How does druidic magic work differently than clerical magic? How does a barbarian's Rage work? Where do all these races come from, without active creator gods? Why are <those> so similar to <these>? I don't reify classes or levels. I do have convenient year/month/week lengths, but only because the being behind the whole thing is obsessed with the number 4 and its multiples (that theme runs throughout the entire setting--9 is a wicked number (spoken as 8 + 1) because 8 is holy because there were 8 + 1 primordials and one rebelled. Four seasons. Four planets. Etc.)

The theme of Order vs Chaos is a big one here--the universe is incredibly ordered. On purpose. Because the primordial entity embodying Change rebelled "before the beginning" and was locked away in the Abyss, both prisoner and jailor. That's changed recently, so things are moving. How the world reacts to that change and how it changes is one theme I'm exploring (through the characters). PCs are "catalysts of change" inevitably--wherever they go, things change in one direction or another.

Yeah, "Order has had complete control and has custom-made the universe to their liking" is a much more reasonable scenario than making everything nice and tidy for largely metagame reasons, since players noticing the artificiality is actually a good thing. My current campaign has a strong 12/7/5 numerology theme imposed by a very Lawful pantheon for much the same reason.


My planes basically boil down to
* Mortal plane (ie material). This is where all energy comes from, from the growth and dreams of mortals (intelligent or not).
* Astral. This is where the Great Mechanism that acts as the clockwork behind the universe moves the energy from the Mortal plane around. Here live gods and devils, angels and all sorts of ascended and non-physical creatures.
* Elemental x 12. One for each month, 3 per element ("pure" plus admixtures with the elements on either side). The seasons come from the varying influence of these elemental planes as the worlds orbit through the space they dominate.
* 4-fold Shadow: A liminal "lubricant" plane between the Mortal and the others, a land of bright mania and a land of quiet dolor. Many of the fey visit here, and this is the temporary afterlife for all spirits.
The Waste, a contaminated area touched by the Abyss, hunting ground of demons.
* The Abyss: a pocket "cyst" that orbits in a cloverleaf pattern, inhabited originally by the Nameless and his Broken Concepts; now with the Nameless and most of the Concepts gone, demons have taken up residence. At its core the Oblivion Gate, a wound in reality that spawns anti-life.

All bounded by the Crystal Sphere, hedging out the Dark Beyond and the Awakener that exists beyond.

Without fixed alignment (one thing I refuse to include), I had to decide what makes an angel? How are devils, angels, and demons different? What is the role of the gods in this order? How did this all come about?

I've gotta say, that planar setup is fairly cliché and frankly pretty boring as cosmologies go. (And quite similar to 4e's, too...but I repeat myself. :smallamused:) While things like doubling up on paraelemental planes and having a plane with a weird orbit are indeed somewhat novel, it's pretty telling that that setup basically hits the "World, Faerie World, Emo World, Heaven, Hell, and Place Where Teleportation Happens" beats that I mentioned before and then merges Faerie World+Emo World and Heaven+PWTH on top of that (how's that for homogeneous, huh?).

If those are the only planes you feel you need for the kinds of plot hooks you're going to use, that's fine (no one expects every Great Wheel plane to be used in every campaign either), but those aren't the planes that get players excited about planar stuff. I'd suggest either adding a few more planes to liven things up a bit (like a Plane of Dreams in place of the Ethereal Plane since mortal dreams are a big thing in this setting) or dramatically overhauling some of those planes to make them more unique (like making the Great Mechanism plane be full of literal cosmic clockwork like Mechanus so plane shift needs a pocketwatch instead of a tuning fork). People are going to care about and want to visit a Plane of Mirrors or Plane of Nightmares (er, maybe not visit that one, really) or Plane of Endless Polyhedrons or Plane of the Norse Afterlife or the like rather than Generic Demon-Infested Hellscape #37.

Eldan
2020-12-18, 04:18 AM
Yeah. THe planes are homogenous because even at the height of plane-specific material (Planescape), there was one box set that had to cover all the Planes of Law, for example. That's five entire worlds in three or four small booklets. That's a player overview, DM material including adventure seeds, magic changes, weather conditions, encounter tables and so on, and a monster supplement.

They didn't have space for more than a few paragraphs on what the plane looks like and 3-4 locations on each plane to give you a feel for what could be there. Most planes have like three cities that have ten lines each, plus two or three strange wilderness locations and maybe a written-up pantheon with their own subheaven.

Meanwhile, Forgotten Realms can get entire 300 page books on one city.

Yora
2020-12-18, 05:28 AM
System matters for every setting.

But when it comes to setting specific mechanics within a system, on a scale from 1 to 10, I would judge the importance as 1.

Tanarii
2020-12-18, 08:32 AM
I don't go nearly as far as you do--I'm happy to play or run AD&D setting material converted to 3e and in my experience you can certainly run 3e Greyhawk with a very OD&D Greyhawk feel given judicious choice of allowed classes, common monsters, campaign themes, and so forth--but I definitely agree that the mechanics used can have a big impact on how well a setting "works" and any setting that's especially tightly-coupled to a specific edition's mechanics (like Mystara and BECMI or Eberron and 3e) is difficult if not impossible to get right when ported to another system or edition (case in point: 4e Eberron).
I think it's more of a experience playing them together heavily associating the one system with the one setting in my mind, so it just feels weird to play them with a different system. :smallamused:

I've run BECMI modules in 5e. It kinda sorta works. And if that works, 3e modules should work to (like TotYP).

The only setting I consider edition neutral is FR. Mainly because I don't really use the setting much. I use the maps, and when I want to run an adventure-arc game (ie one group of players), I plunk it down somewhere and skim a lore book or online resources to cherry pick details needed. Not a game that would make a FR lore geek happy to be in. :smallamused: And maybe also Ravenloft, for similar reasons. I pretty much ignore the lore and run the jaunt into the domains of dread it based on vague memories of first edition lore I read way back then.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-18, 11:00 AM
See, you're positioning that stuff as being opposed to what Greyhawk and FR do with their setting elements when they're both doing basically the same thing. To focus on FR since obviously that's your more hated of the two:

1) There is indeed in-setting reasoning for when and why powerful NPCs and gods do or don't get involved: the former are generally parts of factions locked in many-way cold wars with other factions and only get involved when Realms-Shaking Events or doomsday plots or suchlike are in the offing, the latter don't get directly involved at all except during specific shakeups in the divine landscape.

2) The gods are explicitly neither "global" (no two gods with overlapping portfolios can be part of the same pantheon, so Lathander isn't widely worshiped in Mulhorand and Horus-Re isn't widely worshiped in the Moonsea) nor "true" (there are lots of gods who may or may not be aspects or reincarnations of other gods and several heresies about the nature of various gods floating around).

3) All the elven and dwarven kingdoms are fairly distinct from one another (the mostly-elven Earlann and Cormanthor and the mostly-dwarven Delzoun and Ammarindar were at least as different from each other as the mostly-human Tethyr and Amn are), and all the old human empires (Netheril, Imaskar, Narfell, Unther...) were were 90+% human just like any of the nonhuman nations were 90+% some other race.


1) That's a completely ad hoc, ipse dixit reason. That doesn't explain how PCs, when they get to those power levels can actually make differences without destroying the whole system. That sort of Cold War Balance of Power thing is so fragile that it makes very little sense that it's existed for centuries, basically untouched.

2) None of which make much sense as applied to the setting itself--you can go and visit those divine realms. And they're there. It's trying to have subjective gods and literal ones as well.

3) Not really very different. All the FR cultures (with a few exceptions) are either copy-pastes of real world cultures or the same as the other, just with different dress styles or names. And the whole "90% X" trope is something I've tried very hard to get away from. I don't think any of my core nations are more than about 35% any one race. And cultures are cross-racial as well.

More particularly, FR makes some core setting assumptions that I strongly dislike. Active gods fueled by faith + forced religiosity. The planar structure. Heavy reliance on alignment, including "(mostly) always evil" races. Monocultures/monoracial cultures. Lots and lots of high-power people floating about. In order for me to comfortably run games there, I'd have to rip all that out, which is more work (and way less fun) than just making my own.



The Wheel is conceptually infinite (intervening space that doesn't exist until you walk there, trips that take a fixed amount of time regardless of your mode of travel, a city a finite distance away atop an infinite spire, etc.), not physically infinite, as a deliberate indicator that they don't operate on Material Plane physics. And having bunches of emptiness around the edges is hardly a problem--campaign setting worlds are finite balls of earth and water in an infinite Material Plane, but you never see people complain that only one planet out of bazillions matter, do you?

And the planes are "basically homogeneous" compared to Material Plane worlds only because a given campaign setting gets a half-dozen books fleshing out all the nooks and crannies since groups are expected to spend lots of time there whereas a given plane gets a few pages and a handful of sample locations and plot hooks in one or two planes-focused books and expects a DM to flesh out the rest since groups are expected to make short jaunts to any given one. Any random Material Plane world you visit via spelljammer is gonna be as bare-bones as a MotP Inner Plane writeup, if not totally randomly-generated with no official details at all beyond perhaps a name, and there's been more lore written about the Abyss or Nine Hells alone than about entire smaller settings like Ravenloft or Jakandor.


Except all that material spans multiple editions, none of which agree. And doesn't exist in 5e. That's one of my fundamental issues--I dislike leaning on earlier editions for lore for established settings, because those often smuggle in assumptions about the nature of things. Assumptions which conflict with new things. An explanation of magic, for instance, from 2e or 3e will just flat out fail for 5e. And trying to retcon/"fix" it on the fly leaves a mess (ie 5e's FR, which carries the cruft of earlier editions). Those explanations may have made sense for the editions they were written for, but now they don't. And they screw up any attempt to answer questions about what's really going on.

And yes, I will admit to a significant degree of personal dislike for the Great Wheel and everything it touches. In part because it relies extremely heavily on fixed, cosmological alignment. Something I strongly dislike on first principles. I cannot and will not use that system in a setting as a DM or worldbuilder. It's poison to me, poison to the games I want to run.



So when you talk about whether a "well-written, coherent, artfully-done world" can compensate for a dearth of new mechanics, I think you're vastly downplaying the writing, coherence, and depth of the existing settings that provide all that in addition to a bunch of mechanical options. Sure, a homebrew setting benefits from things like a single author with a singular vision, not needing to support novel lines, and such when compared to published settings, but the gap is on the order of Wheel of Time vs. Game of Thrones, not Lord of the Rings vs. Eragon.


There's lots of stuff there. But most of it disagrees with itself or each other (especially over editions). Everything I've read from FR and Greyhawk has left me bored. And not just bored, wondering how they reconcile all the different pieces. And the obvious expies of real-world cultures shows me that it's not an organic world. It's a pastiche, made by transplanting pieces basically intact and changing the names. Which works for some people. But for me, it feels janky and contrived. And the explanations are backfill, papering over the cracks that become apparent as soon as you start poking around.

But I'm not trying to sell mine as better or unique. More than anything, it's a vehicle for me to explore, and to explore how players change the world as they interact with it. The biggest flaw of those other settings is that they aren't mine, and the vision they have isn't the one I want to go with. I disagree with the fundamental metaphysics of those worlds and find them un-fun.

And in a way, having all of that pre-written (from different editions) means that to feel comfortable (even setting aside my disagreements) answering questions about the setting, I'd have to spend a PhD's worth of time (only slightly exaggerating) doing research. And if I'm going to do that, I'd rather spend that time doing my own research. I've never found "let's play X in D&D" to be interesting. Other-fiction emulation doesn't attract me at all--I don't want to play Marvel heroes. Their stories are already written. I want to discover new stories. And those other settings suffer in my mind because the field is already crowded with stories, both novels and not. There's depth, but it's depth that's already been explored and all the nooks and crannies shaken out. That doesn't fit my needs.

And even beyond that, one of my basic sources of fun is worldbuilding, especially at the level of cosmology and myth (and how it affects reality). So using someone else's setting deprives me of all of that. Because I care about characters fitting the setting, those fundamental level things matter to me. So I'm highly constrained by the settings as they exist. Which drops out most of the fun. I build a framework so that I can answer questions I'd never considered and have those answers open up new things, explain other things in the setting. Like scientific models, the good settings are productive--they provoke new questions and the answers to those questions both fit what already is there and explain new things that weren't directly touched.



Yeah, "Order has had complete control and has custom-made the universe to their liking" is a much more reasonable scenario than making everything nice and tidy for largely metagame reasons, since players noticing the artificiality is actually a good thing. My current campaign has a strong 12/7/5 numerology theme imposed by a very Lawful pantheon for much the same reason.






I've gotta say, that planar setup is fairly cliché and frankly pretty boring as cosmologies go. (And quite similar to 4e's, too...but I repeat myself. :smallamused:) While things like doubling up on paraelemental planes and having a plane with a weird orbit are indeed somewhat novel, it's pretty telling that that setup basically hits the "World, Faerie World, Emo World, Heaven, Hell, and Place Where Teleportation Happens" beats that I mentioned before and then merges Faerie World+Emo World and Heaven+PWTH on top of that (how's that for homogeneous, huh?).

If those are the only planes you feel you need for the kinds of plot hooks you're going to use, that's fine (no one expects every Great Wheel plane to be used in every campaign either), but those aren't the planes that get players excited about planar stuff. I'd suggest either adding a few more planes to liven things up a bit (like a Plane of Dreams in place of the Ethereal Plane since mortal dreams are a big thing in this setting) or dramatically overhauling some of those planes to make them more unique (like making the Great Mechanism plane be full of literal cosmic clockwork like Mechanus so plane shift needs a pocketwatch instead of a tuning fork). People are going to care about and want to visit a Plane of Mirrors or Plane of Nightmares (er, maybe not visit that one, really) or Plane of Endless Polyhedrons or Plane of the Norse Afterlife or the like rather than Generic Demon-Infested Hellscape #37.

I'm amazed you could get all that out of a single sentence description. Those descriptions may sound bland and boring. But I want the fundamental premises to be simple--I don't do baroque. I don't want a separate "Plane of X minor little thing". I want planes that are vibrant and diverse. And there's no Ethereal, there is only Shadow. And the different parts of Shadow are all there simultaneously, except for the Waste which cuts through those layers.

And even the Waste isn't a Generic Demon-Infested Hellscape. It's actually the home of most of the sanest residents of Shadow. Because they have to be to survive. And the other areas are dangerous (and welcoming) in their own rights.

Each plane serves many purposes and exists in many different aspects. Even the Abyss has areas of beauty and peace; not all demons are evil (although they are all dangerous). What makes you a demon is that you've got a jotnar inside of you and haven't succumbed to it yet. Heck, one of the Princes is actually working to end the Abyss entirely. His methods aren't what most would approve of, but he's a sane, honorable person who wants the world to go on functioning.

Sneak Dog
2020-12-19, 08:43 PM
What I appreciate are when the mechanics and the fluff reinforce eachother.

You geek the mage first because they've great firepower and poor defences. The dragon is scary not because of a fear aura, but because they're giant lizards with razor sharp claws, iron-hard scales, spells galore and an intellect to top your wizard. Orcs are scary because they usually live a hard live and when you meet one, odds are they're stronger than a generic human who might've lived a comfortable life in safety. Magic and technology don't mix, and if you mix them, both get weaker. Dwarves naturally like living underground and dislike being above-ground because their lifestyle and tactics function better down there. Professional soldiers often devote themselves to a deity because combining clerical magic with martial prowess is a superior strategy in war.

If I can read the rules and understand what kind of setting this implies, then see that setting be the case? It brings me happiness. It also brings me the ability to use setting knowledge and gain benefits, because I know it is consistent with the mechanics.

You're just writing a homebrew setting for your own campaign using an existing ruleset? Check the setting that goes with the ruleset, figure out whether that setting is consistent with the ruleset.
If yes: Neat, don't stray too far and you will also have a consistent one.
If no: Far too much effort to do it yourself, just accept that it won't be.

You can always write some unique little player options to add some exploration rewards and make players wonder what you've up your sleeve. Magic items that can be found, boons that can be acquired, and whatnot.

Segev
2020-12-19, 10:52 PM
"Magic and technology don't work well together" always bothers me. It's okay if it's, "magic and this one particular physical property don't work well together," which is useful if you want to cut modern tech out by saying, "electronics fritz around magic," but when it's "technology" in general, that bothers me, because "technology" is literally everything your devise to accomplish anything less basic than picking something up and putting it down again. Using a rock to pound open a nut is using technology.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-20, 12:30 AM
"Magic and technology don't work well together" always bothers me. It's okay if it's, "magic and this one particular physical property don't work well together," which is useful if you want to cut modern tech out by saying, "electronics fritz around magic," but when it's "technology" in general, that bothers me, because "technology" is literally everything your devise to accomplish anything less basic than picking something up and putting it down again. Using a rock to pound open a nut is using technology.

I'm of the "if magic is involved, magic is part of technology. May not be down to a science, but it's part of the world" camp. I dislike the "normal world with magic stapled on as "an exception to the rules" pattern. If there's magic, I want it to be part and parcel of the physics (meta Anna's otherwise) of the world.

That dislike is pure personal preference, not something I think is intrinsically bad, FYI.

saba58329
2020-12-20, 05:38 AM
Mechanics are important to me because I use them to run the game. Settings and lore are nice, but often get in the way if you are playing outside the established settings. I play homebrew settings and tend to build the world around the participants. But the settings and the lore are what bring a lot of players in and provide context for the mechanics and make them readable.

me too !!!

Sneak Dog
2020-12-20, 07:39 AM
"Magic and technology don't work well together" always bothers me. It's okay if it's, "magic and this one particular physical property don't work well together," which is useful if you want to cut modern tech out by saying, "electronics fritz around magic," but when it's "technology" in general, that bothers me, because "technology" is literally everything your devise to accomplish anything less basic than picking something up and putting it down again. Using a rock to pound open a nut is using technology.

I concur, but it's an easy way of saying it.

In Shadowrun, a mage casts using line of sight. He can't cast using a television or electronic binoculars, but can using normal binoculars or optical wire. Your body has 'essence', replacing parts of it with (superior) cybernetics messes that up and reduces your magical abilities. There's settings where electricity goes haywire around magic, which complicates modern technology greatly. You can have a setting explain it by saying magic is antiquated and only 'understands' technology up to a certain point in history, after which the deity of magic died/stopped caring/got usurped/no longer comprehended the technological advancements.

Which is where mechanics and lore can interact, and that's fun.