Quote from: One Horse Town;941024Yeah, our group running through Storm King's Thunder has a dwarven cleric of Nike in it.

"In the name of Mark Parker, kill them already! Time is precious!"
Is that how he bestows a Bless:D?

Quote from: jhkim;941055It seems like your argument is that they should have had less options in the PHB, and instead only put that material into supplements - because you feel there is an obligation to include everything in the PHB in every world, but aren't required to use everything from the supplements.

I'm not sure what I would have preferred, but loss aversion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion) is a real thing and in my experience gamers are particularly susceptible to it. They don't miss what they never had, but you tell them they can't have something in the core book they'd only ever briefly glanced over and suddenly that's the most interesting option of all. These removals must be handled carefully, and the less you remove from what they imagine is the 'core' game the better. I suppose this is easier when the core game has less to begin with.

5e makes alignment less important mechanically, but increases its relevance to the setting. For example, evil humanoids are explicitly stated to be more or less robots programmed to be evil. The conceit of good and evil being cosmological constants, at least as portrayed in the game as opposed to more nuanced portrayals like Zoroastrianism, is extremely bizarre and leads to very strange behavior like religions of evil, nations of evil, inherently evil races, and numerous other things. These are necessarily divorced from the real world conceits of good and evil, which boil down to morality being centered around the person doing the talking.

This wouldn't be a problem if we were given tools for running settings with more realistic (read: ambiguous and hypocritical) morality. Instead, everyone who runs 5e is expected to use a setting where good and evil are cosmological constants responsible for the conflict of the campaign. We are not given any option to run, say, the morally ambiguous freedom/control conflict present in the Stormbringer books, the universally evil morality in "grimdark" fiction (i.e. a recent fad which may be succinctly described as an Aristocrats joke contest), or the painstakingly constructed moral codes in World of Darkness or Palladium books.

I prefer Stormbringer morality myself, mostly because of a scene in the comics where one guy kills members of the opposing side out of simple nationalism much to the horror of his comrades including Elric himself. It justifies the mass slaughter of humanoids at the same time it condemns such actions as immoral rather than jumping through needlessly byzantine hoops a la Book of Exalted Deeds.

What I liked about 13th Age was that it gave the icons optional alignments while at the same time making them mostly morally ambiguous or simply self-centered rather than literally having evil as a job. A party of goodly heroes could ally with the diabolist to fight demons because the diabolist wants to control demons for personal gain rather than let them run rampant. Inherently evil races like orcs are often redefined as being amoral primal forces of chaos or destruction.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;941076I'm not sure what I would have preferred, but loss aversion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion) is a real thing and in my experience gamers are particularly susceptible to it. They don't miss what they never had, but you tell them they can't have something in the core book they'd only ever briefly glanced over and suddenly that's the most interesting option of all. These removals must be handled carefully, and the less you remove from what they imagine is the 'core' game the better. I suppose this is easier when the core game has less to begin with.

I'll buy that loss aversion a thing that some gamers are susceptible to, and for them a broad game like GURPS is an exercise in frustration. However, I'm also sure that if the PHB was published with much more limited choices - and those choices were instead put in add-on supplements, that then there'd be a bunch of gamers complaining bitterly about the patchwork of options in D&D5. Which is to say, tastes differ.

Personally, I like having the variety of stuff all in one book, but I know the preference isn't universal. My current setting matches the default D&D, but I've done variant settings in a bunch of different games.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;941077This wouldn't be a problem if we were given tools for running settings with more realistic (read: ambiguous and hypocritical) morality. Instead, everyone who runs 5e is expected to use a setting where good and evil are cosmological constants responsible for the conflict of the campaign. We are not given any option to run, say, the morally ambiguous freedom/control conflict present in the Stormbringer books, the universally evil morality in "grimdark" fiction (i.e. a recent fad which may be succinctly described as an Aristocrats joke contest), or the painstakingly constructed moral codes in World of Darkness or Palladium books.

I agree that there are absolute G/E/L/C alignment assumptions in 5e, and that it isn't an optional system. However, from currently running a game that doesn't use alignment, I do feel like it is easier to ignore alignment than in 1e AD&D, where the absolute 9-alignment system was more often explicitly referenced.

If this causes problems, why not play another game?  I hear Runequest (pre-Mongoose) is pretty good.  I'm not seeing the issue, because D&D land has ALWAYS had it's own issues with trying to insert its little conceits in.  And I'm not just talking about how the heavier the armour the better you will be at defending yourself.  Or that the tech level will always be JUST pre Early-Renaissance. Or that Gods and magic are the only way you can heal.

Some of the monster, like the Coeurl, also known as the Displacer Beast.  The Rust Monster, Gelatinous Cube, the Beholder, the coloured Dragons and five types of Giants, Xorn, Umber Hulks...  Whether or not you use them, they're there, and can often setting defining by their inclusion or exclusion.

As stated above, Dungeons and Dragons has it's own implied setting, even if you don't use everything available, it will still colour the setting in some way.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;941082Or that Gods and magic are the only way you can heal.

This part isnt true and you know it. Pretty much every edition of D&D has had rules for natural healing.
OD&D was 1 point per day.
BX was 1d6 per day
AD&D was 1 per day and after a month any leftover damage was fully healed.
2 is I believe the same. (dont have it handy)
Not sure on 3 and 4 but would lay good odds they have some form of natural recovery too.
5e you recover so fast it makes clerics just short of redundant.

Otherwise good points. Though D&D has bounced around the tech level at points. Masque of the Red Death and that Dragon module for traveling to modern England come to mind. And theres that module about the Sci-Fi alien invasion. And a whole 2e series for playing other eras. Rome, Charlemagne, etc. Otherwise yeah it is mostly focused on pre-ren-fair.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;941082If this causes problems, why not play another game?

Why not study, think about, and politely discuss the problem until issues have been identified, then either solve them to satisfaction or realize that they weren't really problems after all?

But I'm going to be taking your advice to some extent. I always want to have a D&D campaign ready to go because that's where the groups and fresh blood want to be and I do enjoy it (we gripe most about the things we love), but I'm also going to be running 1 on 1 sessions of other games to scratch other itches so I no longer feel a desire to twist D&D into what it shouldn't be.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;941089Why not study, think about, and politely discuss the problem until issues have been identified, then either solve them to satisfaction or realize that they weren't really problems after all?

The issue I have, is that the 'problems' you list have more or less been there ever since it was created, and yes, it's been more codified and obvious now than it was back in the day, but they've always been there.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;941089But I'm going to be taking your advice to some extent. I always want to have a D&D campaign ready to go because that's where the groups and fresh blood want to be and I do enjoy it (we gripe most about the things we love), but I'm also going to be running 1 on 1 sessions of other games to scratch other itches so I no longer feel a desire to twist D&D into what it shouldn't be.

Fair enough.  I'd also like to note that your opening seemed more aggressive than perhaps intended.  And yeah, I can relate about complaining from a position of love (I also play video games.)  I'd rather someone criticize than accept.  Because once you accept, it's done, dead and buried.  Nothing is perfect, and the moment someone claims it is, they've pinned it to their wall like those old butterfly collections, and left it to rot.

One of the tings that was always built into D&D — Undead — always struck me as making no sense. If undead actually exist in your world, why on Earth (or Oerth or Mystara, etc) wouldn't you cremate bodies? Or let birds eat them or whatever.

Especially as D&D's religious cosmology doesn't require having a body for the afterlife (well, maybe in an Egyptian themed module, maybe). If you have a soul, you go to the outer planes and get reborn as something fitting that plane.

Or, and Frank Mentzer actually came up with this in one of the R modules, why wouldn't they be used as a source of cheap labor? Zombies and skeletons aren't inherently dangerous, they just do what a cleric or MU tells them to.

Quote from: JeremyR;941097One of the tings that was always built into D&D — Undead — always struck me as making no sense. If undead actually exist in your world, why on Earth (or Oerth or Mystara, etc) wouldn't you cremate bodies? Or let birds eat them or whatever.

Sometimes, you can't.  Like when a massive plague hits the nation, leaving insurmountable numbers of corpses.  Or an abandoned battlefield.

And here's something, burying the dead is fine.  Simply because of the amount of super human strength necessary to dig your way out of 6 feet of simple dirt.  Undead can still exist, simply because the instances are incredibly rare.

Quote from: JeremyR;941097Especially as D&D's religious cosmology doesn't require having a body for the afterlife (well, maybe in an Egyptian themed module, maybe). If you have a soul, you go to the outer planes and get reborn as something fitting that plane.

Or, and Frank Mentzer actually came up with this in one of the R modules, why wouldn't they be used as a source of cheap labor? Zombies and skeletons aren't inherently dangerous, they just do what a cleric or MU tells them to.

There's a belief that the bodies of the dead are still sacred by several societies in most of the game worlds.

Quote from: JeremyR;941097Or, and Frank Mentzer actually came up with this in one of the R modules, why wouldn't they be used as a source of cheap labor? Zombies and skeletons aren't inherently dangerous, they just do what a cleric or MU tells them to.

Eberron ran with this to a certain extent in the nation of Karrnath. The morally grey government there usually keeps the undead troops and laborers out of sight for PR reasons, but the general populace is aware, inured, and not particularly wicked.

Dragon boobies!!!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;941031As you can see from my careful choice of words, I obviously understand, accept and enjoy the DM's ability to do whatever he feels is right for his campaign, I just think flagging these things to make world building a little more convenient would have been nice. I'm also noting that I feel this edition is especially heavy on setting assumptions that are presented directly to the players and must be excised with caution.

"Flagged"? As in, with "optional rule" headers?

I feel the problem with "flagging" any content as "optional" is suggesting that everything not flagged is "not optional" (which is to say, compulsory) which is patently ridiculous.

Everyone knows that the only compulsory rule in D&D is strict time records (you cannot have a meaningful campaign without them).

Anyway, I understand your gripe. I just think it's a silly one, or more specifically a cultural one: you may have a group that views rulesets as instruction manuals rather than toolboxes. Saying that D&D is supposed to have everything in the PHB really makes no more sense than deciding that you need to use all the tools every single time you open your actual toolbox.

Wait, D&D as written doesn't assume dragon bestiality?

jg

Quote from: JeremyR;941097One of the tings that was always built into D&D — Undead — always struck me as making no sense. If undead actually exist in your world, why on Earth (or Oerth or Mystara, etc) wouldn't you cremate bodies? Or let birds eat them or whatever.

Or, and Frank Mentzer actually came up with this in one of the R modules, why wouldn't they be used as a source of cheap labor? Zombies and skeletons aren't inherently dangerous, they just do what a cleric or MU tells them to.

1: Not allways built in. You can easily do campaigns where not a single undead exists. And there are many modules where none ever appear.

The big source of bodies is wars. Humanoids devastate the land and leave sometimes huge swaths of dead. And even human forces may tend to not pause to do much about bodies if they are sweeping through. The violent nature of the D&D world means that theres dead bodies and skeletons everywhere just waiting to be used.

Or more simply. The villain just walks into a town and slaughters every one to make into zombies. Then sweeps to the next.

2: Right. But you run into the potential hazard of enemy clerics taking them over. That used to be a thing in AD&D. You could actually take command of someone elses undead. Not to mention gods or whatevers messing with them just got the gigglez. Or even other undead taking issue with this use. But you can bet that some places ARE using undead as cheap labour. I believe it even is noted as a thing in Greyhawk way back in Iuz's kingdom.