Alright I’ll bite. What did they do to it?
deleted by creator
A game about combat needs a world full of things for the players to mow down but also not feel bad about killing, and sometimes you need a bunch of Violent Dungeon Fodder that can think and plan and make tactical decisions and potentially be negotiated with.
I’m a bit confused by this. Why not have them be any other species, or combination of them? If they’re capable of being negotiated with shouldn’t the players feel as bad about killing them as anyone else? I feel like “self-defense” can do a lot of heavy lifting in dungeon crawls, I’ve never really noticed my players feeling bad about killing bandit dwarves or whatnot.
deleted by creator
Honestly, I’m a bit more confused now. I definitely agree that humans have a tendency to dehumanize others, but I wouldn’t consider this a good or healthy thing that we should just accept. So having a ruleset that says, canonically, “this group of sentient creatures is inherently evil” and not “this group of sentient creatures is believed to be evil by this other group” you are encouraging the players to take an unnuanced view of the world.
However, as a gamemaster you have to allow your players to make two choices:
- Are the monsters we are fighting people or not?
- Does my character agree with me?
Isn’t this what the lore changes encourage, by not making a factual statement about the groups, so the players should ask themselves this question on a case-by-case basis and not simply based on what type of creature they are? And I’m not sure how the changes would prevent the narrative approach you describe. Saying that goblins and orcs live in human-like societies doesn’t prevent you from telling a story that’s analogous to what has happened between human societies.
Maybe we’re working off of different data points, what WotC material are specifically referring to for the changes?
deleted by creator
Ah gotcha, I was wondering where I might’ve lost the thread. I would agree with everything you said there. But, putting a pin in that and going back to your original post, what are the lore changes that you dislike? I understand what you said regarding inter-species complications, but feel like I might have lost what you were saying after that.
…are you calling first person shooters “shmups”?
deleted by creator
Shmups are pretty distinct from first person shooters. You could probably make a first person shmup, but its definitely not the norm nor do I know of any examples
I enjoyed reading through that, thanks!
I think I more or less agree with where you’re coming from. Part of the fun of roleplaying is getting to explore darkness in a safe way. Not everyone is looking for that and that’s fine, but I definitely find it weird to have the core setting lean into a more “disney-fied” setting. Seems like it should offer options.
It’s probably a symptom of DND becoming so much more mainstream. You can’t please everyone, so the best they can do is minimally bother everyone which can end up pretty… OK. Not great, not terrible, and mostly uninspiring.
Those are my thoughts based just on what you said. I haven’t heard about any of this before now so those are just off the cuff.
@ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling
Pretty sure this is already known but I’ll throw in the tidbit that in Ad&d 2nd Dark Sun, Muls were the progeny of humans and dwarves and were explicitly sterile so this is not exactly untrodden ground. Not saying it’s the way to go, just that it happenedbro basically everyone outside of africa has neanderthal and denisovan heritage, our ancestors had TONS of kids with other human species.
The best lore is lore made at the table with the players. The rest is just gm inspiration.
Yeah, my friends and I always used Forgotten Realms lore as a base in homebrew settings and then just do whatever on top of it, like that one time we had chocobos in a campaign LOL
I read the Forgotten Realms books for 3.5 like books because most of them is lore and not necessarily rules, and I think it was pretty dope back then. I would always use it for the basis of my campaigns, but I would place it somewhere that didn’t have a lot of stuff already written about it so I could kinda of do my own thing while still having all the content and the ability to use things I didn’t create if it made sense to do so.
Slightly unpopular opinion: All official lore is crap and should be generally ignored. (Even the stuff I kind of like) If I want to play in a world where what I can do is limited by the generic, inoffensive, middle-of-the-road, crowd-pleasing writers at some corporation I’ll just play a AAA video game. The ability to be participatory in the creation and evolution of the in-game world is what makes TTRPGs different from consumer media. Why would you give that part up, but still leave yourself with all the cognitive load?
deleted by creator
This is probably why Greg Stafford, the guy most responsible for Runequest and Glorantha’s deep and wide lore came up with his sort of prime directive: “Your Glorantha Will Vary”. He presented his version of the lore but wanted people to re-write it to their hearts’ content.
Play Pathfinder, like an adult.
Pathfinder is superior to D&D ethically, morally and mechanically. Fight me.
Let people play what they want to play.
Sure, but every time someone’s like “I’m going to do a game of secret modern day vampires doing political intrigue in DND” I’m going to judge them.
Sorry, wanted it to come off as a joke. I think Pathfinder is better, but I love dnd too.
Doesn’t mean people can’t give and receive recommendations!
Right, but I don’t think calling people children for playing one game over another is the way to do it.
No, that’s true.
I’m over here enjoying Changeling: the Dreaming.
deleted by creator
Ergh, I always ignore the lore anyway.
I sometimes steal pieces of it, if only for inspiration, but I love worldbuilding and making up my own settings.
I’m currently running an adventure in a Spelljammer setting where most of the previous D&D campaigns I’ve run over the years exist on different planets, with elements of all of them now able to make cameos or interact with each other. It’s wild.
Does D&D finally come with a lore?
Finally a playable game? (still the cost of 3?)
I’m reminded of the story of Garg and Moonslicer, and I wish more publishers would lean in to this approach to good and evil. A purely lore approach would be enough to frame the conflict around, some races are naturally social creatures, and some races are naturally antisocial. Both have hierarches, but not all races have the same natural concepts of fairness and justice. Any individual can embrace either world view or a mix, but one comes more naturally to each race. Even if humanity is naturally a good race (debatable, but whatever), members can obviously deviate significantly.
Ultimately it doesn’t mater what race the slavers are, I’m not going to worry about the ethics of self-defensing a party of slavers to death as PC or GM.
I swear if this is more whining about the Orcs…
deleted by creator
