Best Version of DnD?

[Unruly]

In a world where orc raids kill people on the regular, I don't think they'll get too upset about the kid dying on a job that pays him more for a day or two than most people get paid for a month's work.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Unruly

[etherial]

14 hours ago, BlazingTornado said:

Yeah but then the townsfolk hate the murderhobos for suckering the poor kid to his doom.

Yeah. Hiring torchbearers like that would be at best lawful neutral.

[TheAuldGrump]

Back in the seventies, I had a game where the PCs were hanged for murdering an orc.

 

They encountered the orc on the road - unarmed, not hiding, just walking down the road....

 

So, they killed him, chopped his head off and took it to town.

 

Where they found that the local Baron had a peace treaty with the orcs....

 

Being able to execute the party meant being able to show that he was willing to support the treaty, with no real cost to himself....

 

I also had fun with the orc widow and orphan, as the widow explained that 'Daddy isn't coming home' to her kid.

 

I have never been a fan of an entire race being treated as irredeemably evil.

 

I had a lot easier time with that with the Orc & Elf War setting, where the orcs are the indigenous people of the New World.

 

The Auld Grump, really though, I had expected the murder hoboes to at least talk to the orc....

[TheAuldGrump]

15 hours ago, PaganMegan said:

Mapping.

 

I would say get her a gridded easel pad and some colored pencils.

 

The maps will be big enough for her to use on the table, and she already knows how to draw.

 

Maybe make some stickers for furniture, like you have on some of your old maps.

 

She doesn't need software, she needs EXPERIENCE.

That makes sense, and maybe some PDFs of predesigned floor maps, Skeleton Key, World Works, Zse Zse.... Heck, I just realized, since I know Matt and Maria were in on at least one of the Bones Kickstarters, there is a really good chance that they already have some things that Sam can use.

 

The Auld Grump

13 hours ago, Unruly said:

In a world where orc raids kill people on the regular, I don't think they'll get too upset about the kid dying on a job that pays him more for a day or two than most people get paid for a month's work.

Bull.

 

How do you really think the typical family feels when their kid gets killed?

 

Hey, at least we got twelve gold pices! is not going to be the typical reaction.

 

And the folks that do have that reaction will likely also take money from the orcs, to let them know that the adventurers are coming.

 

The Auld Grump, Besides, according to Roger E. Moore, the monsters are supposed to wait passively in the dungeon, until the heroes come and kill them.

[Sanael]

asking a random kid to walk ahead of the party with a torch seems like a good way to die in an ambush...the kid has no appreciable skill at spotting things, and the party is blind to anything past the torch.

 

and if there's a LG paladin or a Good cleric in the party, it is possible they don't have (m)any spells, to boot. My players know their deities don't appreciate followers going too far outside what the god considers "acceptable" behavior.

 

(I don't so much enforce "alignment," per se, but if you trade your devotion to a deity in exchange for magic, that deity wants a specific sort of ROI...)

 

as for rolling stats, I recently played in a game where the six players each rolled eight sets of 3d6, for 48 sets. The bottom and top 3 were discarded, leaving 42 sets. We then divvied out 6 sets to each player (often with "my wizard wants that 18 for INT, but I'll gladly take that 6 as well" kinds of bargaining). The remaining 6 sets were the array for the first necessary "replacement" PC (for when one died), so we had some incentive to make the remainder not terrible. It was a fun process that made group character-building a different sort of interactive.

 

[BlazingTornado]

1 hour ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Back in the seventies, I had a game where the PCs were hanged for murdering an orc.

 

They encountered the orc on the road - unarmed, not hiding, just walking down the road....

 

So, they killed him, chopped his head off and took it to town.

 

Where they found that the local Baron had a peace treaty with the orcs....

 

Being able to execute the party meant being able to show that he was willing to support the treaty, with no real cost to himself....

 

I also had fun with the orc widow and orphan, as the widow explained that 'Daddy isn't coming home' to her kid.

 

I have never been a fan of an entire race being treated as irredeemably evil.

 

I had a lot easier time with that with the Orc & Elf War setting, where the orcs are the indigenous people of the New World.

 

The Auld Grump, really though, I had expected the murder hoboes to at least talk to the orc....

This is also something I've played with.

 

When I ran Keep on the Borderlands, the three orc prisoners of the bugbears, since Gary didn't specify either way, weren't part of orc cave B or orc cave C, rather they were sort of religious zealots who wanted the other orcs dead for turning away from Gruumsh. The party ended up teaming up with them. And then of course there's that renegade bugbear, whom I just played as this big dumb lovable oaf.

 

Then later on they met this polite samurai-ish hobgoblin sellsword that never acted antagonistically towards the party.

 

And now in the current city they're in, the first big city they ever visited, I stole a page right out of Volo's Guide To Monsters and had kobolds living underground, doing gruntwork in the sewers for the city.

They were searching the sewers for something else and then they spotted a lone kobold eating something, he spotted them, started to flee, so the rangers killed the poor guy with arrows and then the cleric had to go "What's wrong with you?!?" and go revive him.

 

16 hours ago, Unruly said:

In a world where orc raids kill people on the regular, I don't think they'll get too upset about the kid dying on a job that pays him more for a day or two than most people get paid for a month's work.

 

2 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Bull.

 

How do you really think the typical family feels when their kid gets killed?

 

Hey, at least we got twelve gold pices! is not going to be the typical reaction.

 

And the folks that do have that reaction will likely also take money from the orcs, to let them know that the adventurers are coming.

That is the typical entitled attitude of an adventurer isn't it?

Gods forbid other people don't hold the same ideals or values as they do.

 

Matt Colville did a video about exactly that...

 

http://squaremans.com/Willem.pdf

 

 

And indeed, this kind of thing even happened in my game.

There's an archmage in that big city, with a big tower in the middle, and defenses set up against invaders and pesterers. I think I already mentioned Little Miss Chaotic getting blasted by those defenses....

When the rest of the party ended up there following their investigation and inquiring about, they learned what happened and that most of the citizens in the area really just left her body there. I mean this stuff happens regularly for them, some pretentious or thieving adventurer trying to get one better of the archmage... "Oh, another one of those hoboes got fried by a lightning bolt trying to enter Wei Jian's courtyard? Must be Thursday..."

And that made the bard flip. Going on a tirade about the heartlessness of these people and trying her goshdarndest to make that shopkeeper she talked to feel bad. And when that failed she went for Vicious Mockery, a 2d4 cantrip, on the 1d8hp commoner. Killed him on the spot, so again the cleric had to go and stabilize someone.

Then they talk to some guards who explain they tried to take Little Miss Chaotic in until her tantrums just weren't worth the paperwork, so they let her go to get fried. And again the bard was trying to make these guys for whom the sight is commonplace feel bad, and I gotta admit it was comical to see a CHAOTIC good character go on about how these guys are "meant to uphold the laws and the order".

[TheAuldGrump]

Last night's game - the town burned, the citizens were saved, the priest of Dagon was exposed and killed by the PCs (but his boss got away), and the undead thing that brought the hordes down upon the town... disappeared.

 

Then again, the PCs didn't look that hard - they seemed to think that by willingly profiting from a bunch of wreckers, working with and for a corrupted church of Gozrei, and not even bothering to find out what was going on in the ruined castle... the town kinda deserved it. (Not disagreeing.)

 

The players are more upset that the Big Bad in the ruined castle got away - if this were part of a continuing campaign, he would be seen again.

 

The Big Bad was a vampire priest of Dagon - and the guy that originally owned both that castle and the stronghold on the island that the PCs cleared out. The castle was slighted by the good guys, but getting rid of the bad guy gutted the town's economy for a hundred years or so.

 

The town was based a bit on Rottingdean in East Sussex, England. In this case, the return of the Big Bad also marked a change from smuggling to wrecking - going from bad to worse.

 

The Auld Grump - not bad for a gaggle of nine year old kids. I didn't pull any punches.

[Unruly]

2 hours ago, BlazingTornado said:

That is the typical entitled attitude of an adventurer isn't it?

Gods forbid other people don't hold the same ideals or values as they do.

 

It's the typical entitled attitude of just about anyone who has more funds on their person that half the town will earn in a year. There's a good bit of historical precedent for rich people coming in to town, paying someone a wage that is better than they could expect otherwise, and then putting that person in absolutely terrible conditions. Just look at British Colonialism and how they treated indigenous peoples, or how the various "barons" of early modern industry treated their employees.

 

7 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Bull.

 

How do you really think the typical family feels when their kid gets killed?

 

Hey, at least we got twelve gold pices! is not going to be the typical reaction.

 

And the folks that do have that reaction will likely also take money from the orcs, to let them know that the adventurers are coming.

 

The Auld Grump, Besides, according to Roger E. Moore, the monsters are supposed to wait passively in the dungeon, until the heroes come and kill them.

 

Oh, sure, the kid's family is probably going to be distraught and everything. But unless the party keeps getting kids from the same town and they all die in a day or two, the rest of the town is probably going to go "well, he was getting paid that much because obviously the job was dangerous." They probably won't be as likely to sign up with the party as the next torchbearer after the first kid dies, but they also aren't going to run around with torches and pitchforks chasing them out of town because Tom and Helen's boy was killed at work. They're more likely to be indifferent until it becomes a frequent occurrence.

 

Again, look at what workers throughout history had to put up with, and what they were willing to put up with in exchange for some extra pay. It's a pretty surprising thing. It took a long time for labor reform to happen, at least outside of trade guilds.

 

Heck, I still see it today with the oil & gas industry. A lot of the employees turn a blind eye when a rig blows and kills 5 or 6 people because they're getting paid way, way more than most people with only a high school diploma, and often ex-cons too, would anywhere else. It gets mentioned in the papers, and people who don't work there get outraged for a day or two over how terrible it was, but then everyone stops caring and things continue as normal. The only ones who care after that are direct relatives.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Unruly

[Jokemeister]

There is a massive difference between an oil rig exploding and the party sending a kid into a dungeon with nothing but a torch.

 

To be clear, what is being talked about here is the party knowingly sending a kid into a dungeon ahead of the party with nothing but a torch.  The kid has no weapons, no armour, no training and no chance of survival in the event of actually meeting an unfriendly group of monsters (also likely no chance of survival in the event of a trap but if the kid is lucky/smart enough, they may spot the trap so at least this isn't guaranteed death).  And clearly, the party is alert to the possibility of trouble otherwise they wouldn't have hired the kid in the first place.

 

This isn't simply a case of something going wrong leading to the unfortunate death of the kid.  In the case of real life dangerous work, believe it or not, there are precautions taken to try to minimize the amount of danger.  Granted, you can't eliminate the danger entirely and some of this is predicated on the company/people actually following the law/rules/regulations etc but the point is that companies can't simply send people recklessly into dangerous situations without consequences (whether those consequences are severe enough is way outside the scope of this discussion and probably puts this too close to beekeepers so I'm not going there).

 

Going back to the original situation of the kid being sent into the dungeon in front of the party - saying that the party isn't responsible for the death of the kid is, in my opinion, equivalent to arguing that gravity is the killer and not the person who pushed the deceased off a tall building.  It that happened in my group, I would immediately make the party evil (assuming they all agreed to go along with the plan) and they would suffer the consequences of being an evil party (obv, I would make them aware that what they were doing would result in them being of evil alignment).  To be clear, I would also make the party evil if they armed the kid with a sword and armor.  In fact, the only situation where I can imagine not making the party evil is if they made the kid a part of the party - ie he travels with the party and not 10" in front of the party.

 

The last point I wanted to make about alignment is that Good or Evil aren't absolute concepts but relative concepts.  Discussion of Good or Evil in itself is a massive topic which philosophers have discussed/argued about for years and trying to get into that in any depth in an RPG is more than I have any interest in for the purpose of a game.  When I run an RPG, alignment is determined based on what I consider is Good or Evil which in turn is based, to an extent, on what society currently considers as Good or Evil (or Moral vs Immoral - or Right vs Wrong - or well, take your pick as to terminology as they are all subtly different - again, way too deep a subject to explore for the purpose of playing an RPG). 

 

My point is that there are many things which have happened in the past which were considered moral at the time but are no longer considered moral now (arguably, you don't even need to go into the past for this as there are many things happening today which some people see as being moral and good while others see as being immoral and evil).  Again - way too deep a discussion for the purpose of playing an RPG.  However, as the DM, if the player's argument for something not being considered Evil is simply that it was considered acceptable by people at some point in the past, your argument isn't going to get very far with me as I have no interest in playing that game.

[PaganMegan]

Even at the times, you had people pointing out that what was being done wasn't right.

 

Like that long haired hippie freak in Nazareth.

 

Or those hack writers in Victorian England that finally got the laws CHANGED.

[Unruly]

I guess it all comes down to the type of campaign you're playing. The majority of the time, my groups tend to play campaigns that are absolute crapsack worlds where living to be a teenager is considered a stroke of luck and living past 35 is reserved for either the very rich or the very powerful(which usually go hand in hand). Even the cities that are shining beacons, like the one from one of my games I mentioned last week, are actually horrible places ruled by jerks and the only reason they look like shining beacons is because everything else sucks so much worse. Seriously, that lich tore peoples' souls apart and used them to power golems as punishment for breaking the law. And people loved him for it!

 

We don't usually have a very high standard of morality in our worlds, because it's like Ayn Rand on steroids half the time.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I can tell you that in my campaign, the term that would pertain to such PCs is 'Gallows Fruit'. I am not running a game about how wonderful it is to be a Murder Hobo.

 

And the viewpoint of the landed gentry will be that the PCs are entirely expendable. After all, they will be allowed to keep the goods from the condemned PCs.

 

If the player complains, we have a wonderful device that allows people to walk through walls! - it is called the door, and players like that will be invited to use it.

 

Once.

 

That said, the last time I had that problem was in the early nineties. I am quite upfront in regards to what happens to Murder Hoboes in my campaigns.

 

The Auld Grump - I wants stories about heroes, not more accomplished villains than the bad guys in my campaign.

[etherial]

On 10/18/2017 at 11:13 AM, TheAuldGrump said:

I have never been a fan of an entire race being treated as irredeemably evil.

It's the result of a lazy reading of the Silmarillion, wherein Orcs are corrupted elves created and bred by Melkor for the explicit purpose of subjugating and despoiling the world. But even there, there's nothing inherently evil about Orcs. They're created by blasphemy, but freed of their evil overlords, there's no clear evidence they could not lead normal, productive lives.

 

We're playing The World's Largest Dungeon. The party has 2 Dwarves, 2 Paladins, and a few other folks. We walk through the portal and an Orc comes rushing up to the party (unarmed), waving his arms and talking rapidly in some language we don't understand. The dwarves attack the Orc and the Paladins subdue the Dwarves. "Good Sir Orc, I apologize for my friend's misbehaviour. She is clearly disoriented from her unexpected planar displacement in arriving here. Would you perchance be able to tell us where exactly, here is?" That game had many opportunities for characters to explore where the borders between alignments were.

[TheAuldGrump]

13 minutes ago, etherial said:

It's the result of a lazy reading of the Silmarillion, wherein Orcs are corrupted elves created and bred by Melkor for the explicit purpose of subjugating and despoiling the world. But even there, there's nothing inherently evil about Orcs. They're created by blasphemy, but freed of their evil overlords, there's no clear evidence they could not lead normal, productive lives.

 

We're playing The World's Largest Dungeon. The party has 2 Dwarves, 2 Paladins, and a few other folks. We walk through the portal and an Orc comes rushing up to the party (unarmed), waving his arms and talking rapidly in some language we don't understand. The dwarves attack the Orc and the Paladins subdue the Dwarves. "Good Sir Orc, I apologize for my friend's misbehaviour. She is clearly disoriented from her unexpected planar displacement in arriving here. Would you perchance be able to tell us where exactly, here is?" That game had many opportunities for characters to explore where the borders between alignments were.

And then there is Oblivion - where you can find an orc that runs a book store.

 

The Empire in the Elder Scrolls may have many faults, but it is egalitarian as all heck.

 

The Auld Grump

[BlazingTornado]

I try and approach it in Star Trek terms...

It's less that they're evil and more so that their culture developed different and thus they don't hold to the same ideals as humans do.

Orcs, for example, value strength, especially physical. They see a lot of the comforts of civilization as signs of weakness. They're outlanders, raiders, nomads... never making much more than crude villages for bare necessities, and fight for the rest, as the strong are meant to do.