The D&D thread

I really loved 4E (I know, I'm in the minority), but all the new resources are 5E. It's just more basic, I loved the spell "cards" from 4E and would spend hours fiddling with them and printing them. Anyway, I used to dick around on roll20 cause it was free and always thought it was just okay. Finally took the plunge, paid the 9.99 a month for ultimate from FG, and then just pirated all the modules I wanted and put them in the appropriate folder on my HD. My group had so much more fun playing on FG that it's not even close, and I don't think I'll ever go back to roll20.

In other news it has really ruined video games for me because I keep comparing how much fun we had to some shitty 2018-2019 game that some developers shit out. I'm finally playing 5E and we've already had some super memorable moments.

I haven't played a game of 5E, but I have been reading the rulebooks that arrived over the weekend and I am starting to formulate a rough outline of the hook and general direction of my campaign. Granted, I don't have any experience with 5E, but it looks like it is going to free me of a lot of self-imposed bonds that I have experienced with every other edition I have DM'd. In 2nd and especially 3rd, I always felt that every supplementary mechanic I included in my game was often handled incorrectly. It's not that I had no confidence in my ability, it was more along the lines of "Ok, my players are now on a Galleon in rough seas, what rules/checks/etc am I forgetting and who is going to be salty when I slightly fuck up the ship-to-ship boarding rules?" Those kind of scenarios cost me a lot of mental energy and it bogged my games down. Rules bloat had a lot to do with why I quit playing D&D when I did (that and finding "normal" players is close to impossible).

5E essentially functions as a reset button for rules bloat and the core mechanics of 5E give ruling agency back to the DM by not giving the players access to a massive library of books that allow them to 'prove' the DM wrong. I know DMs have the final say, but it makes DMing so motherfucking tedious when you have to regularly defend yourself with: "OK, I know what the rule says, but this is how I do it." Maybe some of you have a massive pool of players to choose from and can just boot people who constantly challenge you, but I've never had that luxury. I'm also quite picky about whom I allow in my game and more importantly in my house.


All in all, I like the middle ground that 5E strikes. 5E is elegant enough that it allows the DM to really implement A LOT of the supplemental rules of 3/3.5 in a much more streamlined form through narrative. Don't get me wrong, there are several aspects of 5E that I absolutely do not like and will get house-ruled. For instance - the short/long rest mechanic. I'm more or less OK with the short rest, but healing to full in an 8 hour rest? Nah, son. If my players insist on adhering to or abusing that rule, the random encounter chart for camping will quickly get renamed to routine encounter chart for camping.

my dm actually sets up sort of a contract with his players. some of it is just basic behavior expectations, some of it is house rule information.. but the idea is that this is a social contract where at the end of the day everyone at the table should be having fun, including the DM. it's nice because he really takes that to heart. last year we did sort of a tourney with 2 dm's and 8 players (we just sperged out for the weekend and played like 8 one shots back to back). he and the other DM had worked out a loot system that was... functional. unfortunately 2 people CONSISTENTLY got really bad loot roles the entire weekend. the DM's defense was that rng is part of the game, you roll dice and sometimes they don't roll in your favor. the guy (being extremely respectful) just looked at him and said "yeah... i get it... but that's not fun."

the dm IMMEDIATELY started reworking loot rules for the next tourney

Absolutely not an indictment on you, but I absolutely hate the phrase of "social contract" because it just REEKS of SJW rhetoric. I know it's semantics, but I just prefer to set "ground rules" because I feel like that conjures to mind common issues like drinks need to have a lid, trying to avoid interrupting players with they're speaking, etc, etc. I absolutely want my future players to have fun and I will happily engage them with how they would like a campaign run, but if they want trigger warnings for (or total avoidance of) 'sensitive' issues like sexual assault, racism, torture etc in a fantasy game....nope, I'd sincerely appreciate those kind of players just fucking off from the beginning. I don't and never will engage in something like narrating a rape or torture scene, but I'm not going to tap dance around ANY of those issues when players regularly describe how they are disemboweling Orc_002 immediately after they've beheaded Elf_011.

The selective outrage literally makes me want to throat punch those people.

i mean, you can tell us how you really feel. this is safe space.

honestly though, to some extent it is semantics but i do think it's important for the group to sit down and understand the kind of game they are playing. i mean if you are just doing straight up modules there isn't MUCH to discuss other than "we're doing tomb of annihilation, do you want regular or meat grinder mode?"

but my weekly game, when we started 2 years ago, the DM sat us all down and asked us what kind of game we wanted, political, mystery, hopeless misery, goofy nonsensical comedy... some of those themes can lead to certain hot topics naturally. i can absolutely see why someone would want to avoid stuff like that. maybe you're in a pretty eclectic group so you want to avoid party infighting, maybe you just want to avoid that stuff because you play d&d to ESCAPE real world nonsense.

though you definitely have a point about one evil being okay while the other you can't even talk about. but honestly as a DM there's PLENTY you can do to... well, be passive aggressive about "good" characters doing "evil" things. you're a paladin that wants to route a group of orcs because they are raiding the locals? yeah, that makes sense. when you're killing these orcs you are cackling and going into minute detail on how you do it? "are you doing this in character?" if they don't get the hint, tell them their smite didn't work. not PERMANENTLY but nudge them a little. "you call forth your divine gifts and nothing happens. in the back of your mind you feel a tinge of doubt. not you doubting yourself, but something else, someONE else... doubting you... (maybe you should stop torturing orcs.)"

j00t said:

though you definitely have a point about one evil being okay while the other you can't even talk about. but honestly as a DM there's PLENTY you can do to... well, be passive aggressive about "good" characters doing "evil" things. you're a paladin that wants to route a group of orcs because they are raiding the locals? yeah, that makes sense. when you're killing these orcs you are cackling and going into minute detail on how you do it? "are you doing this in character?" if they don't get the hint, tell them their smite didn't work. not PERMANENTLY but nudge them a little. "you call forth your divine gifts and nothing happens. in the back of your mind you feel a tinge of doubt. not you doubting yourself, but something else, someONE else... doubting you... (maybe you should stop torturing orcs.)"

Click to expand...

I have a bunch of first time players at my current table and when it came to the talk about doing evil for evil's sake, they got a simple message. While I do not really care about alignment, since I would rather you play your character than worry about fitting into a box, only I get to be chaotic evil. We aren't playing an evil game, you do something evil, there will societal consequences. You stay doing evil, your character is mine now. We will discuss some motivations and, congratulations, you're old character is a villain now. Time to roll a new someone up to hunt your old self down.

overall i think that's a good rule of thumb. people REALLY don't understand the nuances of what evil is. we ran curse of strahd last year and the DM kind of flipped the narrative so strahd was our ally. he was still EXTREMELY EVIL but barovia was under attack from other realms of terror and barovia is strahd's. i also talked about it in this thread a while ago but i played a lawful evil paladin for a bit. he was extremely loyal and fought for peace, but he had absolutely no problem doing what was needed to secure that peace.

people think that evil means you are actively plotting murder at all times, and people think that chaotic evil means that you are actively plotting the murder of your companions at all times. that's not what that means at all. evil generally means you are primarily selfish or self-interested and chaotic just means you prefer freedom over an overseeing organization.

you ABSOLUTELY can be a chaotic evil character that focuses on keeping your companions alive because you understand that if THEY are alive, you are that much more likely to stay alive yourself.

Well, you have to kind of "let yourself go" in terms of alignment. It's acting and you have to believe it, for that time. Practice is how you get better. Once you "are" that character where your line is becomes clear.

In D&D news though, I broke a rule I've had forever: I watched someone on youtube play D&D. I watched a few people, the high-views stuff that people say is good. I did it cause I wanted to see how people were using Fantasy Grounds, which I love. I say this with humility: I am a great DM. I was bored watching these youtube people, and the podcasts. The games I've had have been way more exciting, and funnier, and more memorable. I know it's partly cause I'm not "there" and it's not "my" campaign, but you read the comments about how great it is, and it makes me want to invite people over to my group cause ours is so much more fun.

the really nice thing about 5e is that alignment has taken a pretty strong backseat. you don't even need to be lawful to be a paladin or a monk anymore.

i'll give you some examples of my current game. i'm playing a lawful good dwarf but i do some pretty... atypical things for someone who's lawful good. i look at the lawful side of things as that he absolutely believes in order and hierarchy and things that threaten the order and hierarchy that he belongs to as things that MUST be dealt with. he's good, because he's very much concerned with his friends, his family, his clan. he will GLADLY give his life for the people he cares about, but anything OUTSIDE of that bubble is free game.

he's got no problem killing someone, destabilizing a rival clan, because it means that HIS clan is on top and HIS clan is safe.

edit: also, in real life people do things that are out of character ALL THE TIME. acting in character is important in short stories because you want to be consistent but in the kind of long form story telling that happens in d&d, you just naturally end up WAAAAAY more complicated.

yeahthatisneathuh said:

Well, you have to kind of "let yourself go" in terms of alignment. It's acting and you have to believe it, for that time. Practice is how you get better. Once you "are" that character where your line is becomes clear.

In D&D news though, I broke a rule I've had forever: I watched someone on youtube play D&D. I watched a few people, the high-views stuff that people say is good. I did it cause I wanted to see how people were using Fantasy Grounds, which I love. I say this with humility: I am a great DM. I was bored watching these youtube people, and the podcasts. The games I've had have been way more exciting, and funnier, and more memorable. I know it's partly cause I'm not "there" and it's not "my" campaign, but you read the comments about how great it is, and it makes me want to invite people over to my group cause ours is so much more fun.

Click to expand...

i have the same thing. i don't mind watching critical role because i'm not necessarily watching people play dnd, i'm watching people roleplay and do improv. i LOVE matt colville but i can't watch his campaign because i'm just bored. i mean it's cool stuff and we are using a lot of his stuff, but like you, i'd rather be playing

Alignments made sense in the early days of roleplaying, when people were still getting used to the concept of portraying someone other than themselves. Alignments gave you focus and direction for your character-- they were an idea to focus your roleplaying around.

Pretty much zero need for them in a well-developed system these days. There are much better ways to handle accountability.

j00t said:

i have the same thing. i don't mind watching critical role because i'm not necessarily watching people play dnd, i'm watching people roleplay and do improv. i LOVE matt colville but i can't watch his campaign because i'm just bored. i mean it's cool stuff and we are using a lot of his stuff, but like you, i'd rather be playing

Click to expand...

Not just that I want to be playing, it's that theirs felt boring. They were weak on storytelling and thinking on their feet, which I guess is in my wheelhouse, and my group demands a lot of that which constantly sharpens me.

Clearly the fans of Critical Role / D&D are quite ready for an animated version...

Hey guys, im new to DnD, anyone got a newbie game going on Roll20??

a_skeleton_02 said:

r/lfg

Best place to look!

Click to expand...

Thanks

Awhile back someone posted a great link to a collection of all things roleplaying. I believe it was called The Eye or something. Thats no longer working. Is there another good site out there by chance?