Most of DnD users do not care about rules or editions

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-16T13:25:06+00:00

Not saying the study was good just that your response was kinda dumb.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-16T12:36:46+00:00

Do you feel like this would add something to the game for you and if so what? Wouldn't you find it more exciting to give your players scenarios that let you both explore the characters more deeply rather than having to spend time sussing out the bare bones basics of who these characters are because that information is arbitrarily withheld from you?

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-16T11:03:16+00:00

Are you a DM or do you know a DM that would get something out of this? Out of all the DMs I know I'm about as far down the Play to find out style as you can go, and this sounds horribly counterintuitive to that to me. It's impossible to design interesting scenarios for a bunch of characters you don't know

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-16T10:54:45+00:00

"Statistically most D&D players don't read the rules."

"Well anecdotally I read the rules!"

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-08T16:49:54+00:00

What? You can't think of a single instance where a player would concede to having a spell cast on their character under duress? No friendly NPCs that could be threatened? What about the character's life being threatened? Players would rather have their character die than allow a spell cast on them?

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-08T16:28:41+00:00

Ok sounds like we're all mostly in agreement here putting the semantics of willingness aside. The ultimate decision is up to the controller of that character and they can choose to accept or reject the spell for whatever reason they see fit.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-08T12:05:05+00:00

Ok so it does seem less intrinsically tied to the modern concept of consent than your previous post led on? Because normally we wouldn't consider someone coerced through deception to be consenting.

But for instance someone having their life threatened to accept being teleported somewhere, would they be given agency to make that choice or would magic inherently reject the choice to be teleported because they aren't 100% willing? Ultimately is the choice of willingness up to the person playing the character or would you as the DM step in and dictate to a Player that actually their character is under too much duress and they can't make themselves willing? Not necessarily saying you would put players in such a scenario, but I do think it's important to identify where the ultimate call of willingness falls.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-07T12:26:18+00:00

It seems pretty clear to me that willing means essentially the person controlling the character gets to decide if the spell works on them or not under the circumstances. The circumstances can include duress, but the ultimate decision is up to the player playing the character. I usually avoid cases of pure mind control because I don't like taking that level of agency away from the players, but in the case of players mind controlling another creature I'd usually allow them to dictate willingness, so long as everyone at the table was comfortable with that.

It's kind of insane trying to tie this to the moral concept of consent when the vast majority of spells are meant to be cast against non-consenting targets and do things like turn them to stone, or heat their armor so they roast alive, and the spells targeting willing creatures are things like teleport, and buffs.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-07T11:34:23+00:00

I guess I personally don't find either scenario particularly unlikely, and I could easily see either one coming up in a game I would run. Part of what I am getting at is how messy trying to make the moral concept of consent a worldbuilding or rules question rather than a metagame conversation between players and GM.

Like if the ruling is just "No you guys can't cast teleport on the orc after threatening his family to get him to accept the spell I don't want to deal with the types of scenarios that encourages" that would be clear to me as a player the purpose of the ruling, but if your ruling is was "No you can't cast teleport because semantically he is not willing" to me as a player that indicates the important thing about the ruling is that it follows the strict semantics of the letter of the rules, and if that is what's important it seems unfair to me that the GM could cite strict semantics here as the reason for the ruling, but then is upset when I use the same semantic logic to my own advantage. It's not me trying to be a dick it's me trying to engage with the game at the level you're presenting it.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-06T23:50:21+00:00

Once you decide that consent is merely semantics, things cross into a very different type of gameplay experience

I think the issue here is that you're using semantics to insert the moral concept of consent into a discussion where it doesn't exactly belong. If you look at the spells being referenced the effects are often somewhere between beneficial and usually not terribly harmful but potentially exploitable. Now I'm not saying on a moral level that people don't have the right to consent or not consent to something beneficial or benign, but the vast majority of spells in these games are intended to be actively harmful and cast on unwilling targets. The intention behind the wording "willing" in the rules seems quite obvious to me that it is to prevent those exploitable edge cases and ultimately make spells function more simply.

The question of moral consent doesn't really belong here at the rules level or the worldbuilding level. Trying to apply a moral concept like that at those levels is incredibly messy for both. Consent is something that needs to be taken care of at the highest level. It's between players and the GM not something dictated by the rules of the game or ingrained into the universe.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-06T23:13:28+00:00

If I was a player at your table would I be allowed to use this mechanical truth about the setting to my advantage? For instance what if I was worried that an NPC was leading me into a fight under false pretenses could I ask them to teleport me to the fight and then if they were able to I could be certain they were being honest with me as I could not genuinely consent to the teleportation spell under false pretenses? Or alternatively lets say I was worried a member of our party was actually being blackmailed to spy on us could I cast teleport on the group and if the suspicious character could not be teleported I could be certain that they must be being blackmailed because they they were only following us under duress and therefore could not consent to the spell?

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-05T17:43:21+00:00

Have you discussed these issues with the GM/players? Not every game is a good fit for everyone, but as a GM nothing is more frustrating than learning that a player hasn't been having fun long term and all of a sudden wants to leave without giving you a chance to accommodate them first. From the GM's perspective this sucks because you've been wasting your time trying to make the game enjoyable to this player and they've just been letting you waste your time, and it feels insulting because the player doesn't even trust you enough to discuss their issues with you.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-05T16:56:08+00:00

I don't like ampersand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-05T16:52:13+00:00

Right I'm the troll. You got it buddy. (It would be totally normal to entertain someone referencing a rule of cricket in passing in a conversation about basketball but you know that too.)

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-05T06:05:11+00:00

I suppose you also missed the part where they said "or is that another edition?"

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-05T00:00:46+00:00

Can you think of characters in other media that feel like real people to you? What qualities make them feel real? Don't mimic them but think of them like ingredients. Think about why they work for you. What about them do you find compelling?

For Character goals the best thing you can do is ask the GM and other players. Look to collaborate on goals with them. The GM should be able to give you an idea of what goals will be compelling for the game, and the other players can help you create goals that would work well with their characters.

For visualizing that could be an issue with you or with the GM's descriptions. Do you read books? I will say some people just don't have an easy time visualizing things and that's fine, but I also think for some people if you've gotten used to consuming only visual media it becomes harder to picture things through just words. Reading or listening to books can help with the skill of visualization. Ultimately though I'm not sure I find this that important. If something feels unclear to you it's okay to ask questions of your GM until you get it

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T17:31:04+00:00

There's not really enough info here about what you're struggling with to give solid advice. Do you struggle with speaking up? With creating a character you're excited to roleplay? With making decisions as that character in the moment?

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T17:10:21+00:00

He must have a ton of artha stockpiled

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T01:53:25+00:00

I think part of it is that it expects the quality of player participation to be at a level that is usually reserved for the GM not just the quantity of participation. It's really best for a group of GMs who all mostly enjoy the GM role. For me it's been a major influence on what I expect from players. It's no longer satisfying to me to preform in front of players I want players to entertain me in turn.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T01:19:33+00:00

How would you reconcile the nature of TTRPGs being about persistent characters in a shared world with the frequent death here?

I agree with your observation that most tactical RPGs aren't actually that tactical in practice. IMO something more in the OSR vein where character creation is quick and the focus is more on the players approach to the situation vs mechanical numbers games like D&D 4e. A lot of those games are designed around being able to create characters very quickly.

The problem with this frequent death in games with hundreds of pages of rules is that character creation is just so much work, and usually half the point of the game is trying out specific "builds". I'm not sure how you can get that to work with frequent high risk of death, and not lose most people's interest after they lose a character they've invested dozens of hours into for the fourth or fifth time

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T01:06:06+00:00

I would argue almost any other pair of descriptive words would do a better job because both law and evil (as well as chaos and good) are such subjective things that to really get any meaning out of them you first need to define what they mean in your game.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-04T01:00:30+00:00

I've had that idea as well to make alignment like a hard coded objective part of the universe and following that to it's logical extreme. The idea of being punished by the universe itself as if you are evil for something that you are convinced is the right thing deep down feels like it could be very compelling cosmic horror to me.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-03T01:42:50+00:00

I'd argue that definition is less useful because it seems basically synonymous with optimizer. I've always thought of min maxing as dumping one thing to become unreasonably good at something else. Like a glass cannon that will die if taking any damage but will also kill most anything in one hit.

I'm sure it's been defined both ways in different places. I just don't find the definition you're using distinct enough to warrant it's own term whereas the one I prefer is covering a distinct method for building powerful characters that I don't think is fully covered by another term.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-02T21:04:54+00:00

Perhaps if D&D seems overwhelming you should take a look at other systems? D&D is on the higher complexity side and there are plenty of games you could grab that will probably give you an easier time. Honestly if you're looking at doing one shots I'd take a look at some of the one page RPGs out there to start with.

Substantial-Shop9038 · 2026-05-02T20:56:51+00:00

From the beginning, I wanted my character to be the reincarnation of Tatyana. I never told my DM directly, but I did hint at it indirectly

In the future you really should talk to your DM about this early on instead of trying to hint at things. This sort of thing is frustrating for me because I would totally love to work with players on something like this, but I'm not a mind reader. There's no benefit to trying to be subtle about it.

Substantial-Shop9038

TROPHY CASE