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

mamba said:

we are going in circles, I answered that days ago

You know local messengers where you are local to, not everywhere on all planes, as that would require one of two things, and both are nonsensical

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I didn't say you know the local messengers everywhere/on all planes. I'm pretty sure I've already said this too, but you (meaning your PC) know the local messengers in the places where you (the player) use the feature. That's it, and it isn't nonsensical.

mamba said:

agreed, it is not, mine makes sense and yours does not

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Seriously? It makes perfect sense. It's telling you what you know. You know (1) "how to get messages to and from your contact, even over great distances;" and this knowledge (i.e. (1) above) breaks down "specifically" into (1a) "the local messengers" who can deliver messages for you , (1b) the "corrupt caravan masters" who can deliver messages for you, and (1c) the "seedy sailors who can deliver messages for you." It's saying you know these people as the means (the "how") by which you communicate with your contact. How does that not make sense to you?

mamba said:

I wholeheartedly disagree, 'know' means you already know the person, you are talking about 'recognize' or something. and that is not what is being described here "specifically, you know the local messengers"

You even used 'know' in the same sense as me to demonstrate that the chars could know a messenger just a few posts (and not even an hour) ago...

so which is it.... I guess it simply is whatever you think helps your case at the moment....

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I'm honestly not sure what distinction you're trying to make here. Of course your character already knows them! It's knowledge your character gained in their past, thus related to their background as a criminal. Now, I'm grasping at straws here, but you've been putting a great deal of emphasis on the word specifically and have just done it again, and it occurs to me you might be reading the quoted text as something like "you know specific local messengers", and if that's the case, while it wouldn't describe something not encompassed by the actual text, I'd say that's just a wrong interpretation and would make the feature needlessly rigid. One can obviously know people collectively as a group, which is what the text actually says. I.e. you know these three categories of people. I'd gloss specifically as used in that sentence as "to be precise".

Hriston said:

I didn't say you know the local messengers everywhere/on all planes. I'm pretty sure I've already said this too, but you (meaning your PC) know the local messengers in the places where you (the player) use the feature. That's it, and it isn't nonsensical.

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yes it is nonsensical. There is no difference between knowing them everywhere and knowing them everywhere the character uses the feature.

For the latter to be true, the former needs to be true, or you are incredibly lucky, neither of which makes sense

Hriston said:

Seriously? It makes perfect sense.

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yes, seriously, it makes no sense whatsoever

Hriston said:

It's telling you what you know. You know (1) "how to get messages to and from your contact, even over great distances;" and this knowledge (i.e. (1) above) breaks down "specifically" into (1a) "the local messengers" who can deliver messages for you , (1b) the "corrupt caravan masters" who can deliver messages for you, and (1c) the "seedy sailors who can deliver messages for you." It's saying you know these people as the means (the "how") by which you communicate with your contact. How does that not make sense to you?

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you know them locally, not everywhere throughout the multiverse. That would make sense, but since you insist on ‘everywhere you use the feature’ it is simply utter nonsense

Hriston said:

I'm honestly not sure what distinction you're trying to make here. Of course your character already knows them! It's knowledge your character gained in their past, thus related to their background as a criminal.

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cool, so we agree it is a person you already know beforehand, because last time you did not sound like it was.

So you are telling me from your past as a criminal you know people in every settlement of every world in the multiverse, and they are all part of a multiverse-spanning network that knows your contact and can get messages to them, really? And you are wondering why I say this does not make sense?

You know the local thieves guild in your hometown and maybe a dozen people that can get messages to your contact. That makes sense and is in line with knowing the local messengers, not your ‘wherever you are, that is where you know them’ interpretation

Hriston said:

One can obviously know people collectively as a group, which is what the text actually says

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that is not what the text says, it is very much talking about individual people that fall into one of several categories… and how do you recognize a member of that group (and now we are back to ‘recognize’ a person, not ‘know’… that did not last long…)?

And that still means there is someone in every town in every world, still complete nonsense, even with that twist of what is written

Hriston said:

I have 100% chance of knowing my friend in Barcelona whom I've known since we went to high school together. When I visit Barcelona there will be no chance of me not knowing her.

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Great if you're visiting Barcelona, but how much does it help if you're visiting Rome?

Henadic Theologian said:

Especially cost per page.

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I have the feeling 50 dollars is too cheap in 2024.

Hriston said:

This doesn't answer the question why when DM-authored fiction is made up matters, unless you're saying consistency doesn't matter unless when the fiction is made up matters, and I don't believe that's true.

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An overarching principle goes something like this

Posters evidently have different ideas of "the agreed way". For example, one way I've been mulling to picture how many people play knowledge skills is that "enquiries invite GM to author fiction that is responsive". Where "responsive" includes - within the notional scope of the player's chosen knowledge domain and responsive to (constrained by) the questions they've asked.

Anyway, reading the debate on features like Ship's Passage and Criminal Contact, to my observation the background principles that determine how those should go, vary group to group. One mode is that one player has authorial control of the setting and other players must conform their fiction to the context they supply (including context supplied ad lib). An example of something similar is where a group of GMs running a shared campaign nominate one of their number to own the setting, or own an aspect of the setting, agreeing that the rest will conform with what they establish in that regard.

Another mode is where authors or designers external to the group altogether have authorial control of the setting and players (GM included) must (choose to) conform their fiction to that context. I think that is what folk generally imply by "genre". A group will follow some norms for what utterances are accepted, and where those norms can readily be seen to derive from an external reference then it's likely those norms are bundled up as a "genre". That's in contrast to the case where the group synthesize messily to produce their genre through play. It's not all or nothing. Choosing to play a character doomed to bring the apocalypse would be adhering to genre when playing Apocalypse Keys, even if authorship of other facets of the fiction were shared. Thus implying narrow and broad, homogenous and heterogenous notions of "genre".

So then the more specific principle you might be interested in goes something like this


In that light, if I read your question correctly it asks - who owns genre? Who owns which constraining norms for our fiction? The answer to that evidently varies and it seems hard to me to conjure more than aesthetic or preferences arguments for one or t'other. True genre-less free-for-alls are rare if not absent altogether, to my observation.

I am…encouraged…by these most recent news leaks. I am changing my vote to “yep”. I don’t know if it will be enough to get me to run it for my family and friends, but it does seem to be moving in the right direction.

…except for the new term for races. Dragonbane does it better with “kin”. This is a fantasy role playing game. Why not use “folk”?

UngeheuerLich said:

I have the feeling 50 dollars is too cheap in 2024.

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As long as they can turn a profit, not sure how it could be too cheap. They want the Barrier to entry to be low, and the Core books are going to move in major bulk.

Parmandur said:

As long as they can turn a profit, not sure how it could be too cheap. They want the Barrier to entry to be low, and the Core books are going to move in major bulk.

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Yeah. I hope they don't sell it at a loss. And maybe it is the right move to sell it as cheap as possible initially so as much people as possible make the switch. They can raise the price later on.

But for now they probably earning some karma points (goodwill) is better for profits in the long run.

Edit: the 2014 phb was 40 dollars. I thought it also was 50 dollars. So 50 dollars now seems reasonable. Especially for the expanded page count.

UngeheuerLich said:

Yeah. I hope they don't sell it at a loss. And maybe it is the right move to sell it as cheap as possible initially so as much people as possible make the switch. They can raise the price later on.

But for now they probably earning some karma points (goodwill) is better for profits in the long run.

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For context, most of the MSRP on these books is for the print margin of stores...which h is what Amazon is skipping in their discounts to sell closer to the price that WotC sells the books to distributors.

Wait ... so now WotC is terrible because they're selling the books too cheap? Is there so little to complain about that this has to be an issue?