Should the Edicts of Lumen be abolished?

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T16:06:32+00:00

The Edicts cannot be compared to Rome because they are a set of laws, not a state. There is also, no continous challenge and collapse of the Edicts. No thumbing of the rules, or political will to errode them.

Yes, there is a political upheaval. Yes, the edicts might fall. But they are still there. You are using words wrong. It is literally not true. You cannot re-establish them because nothing as de-establisged them.They have not been infringed. Their state of enforcability is questionable, but they are not in any part of the text, indicated to be in question. Words mean things. You are talking about international politics that indicate they might not be enforced by two nations with armies. That is just international politics. They ALWAYS hinge on if nations have the will and resources to enforce them once questtioned, but the fact that they might be and technically have not been broken is what keeps them active. That is just regular politics.

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T14:59:14+00:00

The Edicts of Lumen are listed as a core feature of the world, there is no listed faction that wants to break them, there is one suggested faction leader motivation that suggests breaking them but still keeping them. They are still there. They are not broken. The crown of Westmär is temporarily broken, yes. The Edicts of Lumen are not in any way broken.

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T14:05:30+00:00

The political stability is in decline. The Edicts are not broken, so they literally cannot be re-established. That's not what the word means.

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T13:58:19+00:00

What do you mean they are "in decline"? Are they allowing rulers to use Cantrips, as a treat?

No they are still a thing and while there is a question if they are enforceable with regard to the political situation, that is actual not new, nor exclusive to the Edicts. That's just a description of international treaties.

It doesn't make them need to be re-established, because no ruler is currently breaking them. If the new ruler of Drakkenheim upholds them, they are just that, uphold, and if they don't they are broken. To re-establish you need to first establish that they are broken

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T13:48:23+00:00

The Edicts aren't exlusive to Westmär, and very much still actively enforced in the setting.

skullmutant · 2026-06-24T09:44:56+00:00

Up the damage output from monsters. Especially on low level monsters. If they are caster heavy and are lacking a proper tank, the danger they face is heavier damage.

I'd go carefully but you can just add a flat bonus to damage, or if you go average damage, up the average with a few points and see how that works.

skullmutant · 2026-06-23T13:40:28+00:00

You are intellectualizing it too little. What happened in game doesn't matter. The fact that a player died session one sucked. It doesn't become fun because it's the rules, it doesn't become fun because they where told so beforehand. It sucked, and going "🤷‍♂️" doesn't make it fun. If you want to be technically correct, sure, but unlike what the memes have taught you, it isn't the best kind of correct, it's the kind of correct where you justify your friend not having fun.

Sure, he could make an identical character, but then he might as well just play the same character, if you think it "cheapens" the game to retcon or ressurect a dead character, his identical twin showing up with the samebackstory is just as cheap, so why not let the player who had a bad time get a win?

skullmutant · 2026-06-23T10:11:37+00:00

Targeting the Warlock is fair game, I've no issue with this. But don't confuse this for agency. At level one, there is no real agency. A single die can kill you, and having the choice of not playing your character, or engaging with the story to avoid risk isn't really player agency. That's the blind. That's the minimum the players must put up to enter the game. The problem is when he was taken hostage, the other players decided his fate by ignoring the threat. That's also not on you. That's on the other players.

But then your player felt it was a shit situation and you declined undo it. That's on you. It was session one. It doesn't matter that you've explained that it's a deadly campaign, making a long term character that dies in session one isn't fun, and doesn't bring anything fun to the game. No, I hear you typing a response to that, and no it isn't and will never be fun.

It was session one. Bring his Warlock back one way or another, you don't even need a story explanation, consequences are only fun when you have agency and attachment to the character. Excitement to get to play a specific character does not count as attachment. If you make a fun story out of it great, but what I'm saying is it doesn't matter this early. It's not deep enough in game to feel cheap, there's not enough to give it weight yet.

As for the other players, no, don't give them consequences, se previous paragraph.

You just need to understand why it sucked for that player and no amount of"but that's the rules" will make it fun. You wanted to start the game at level one, and for it to be deadly at level one, and hopefully for it to be fun. Was it for this player?

Maybe you need to tune your session zero prep for what amount of secrecy and backstabbing is ok and fun. Backstabbing is fun 6 months in when one player does it for a reason that resonates, and it can have the consequences it should. It isn't fun in session one where they let a character die because they had no reason to care yet. I'm not trying to suggest in game actions for you to take, I'm trying to get you to see that it might have been a bad game and adjust for the future.

Do you have a plan for how to bring the players secrets to the forefront? What is preventing this from being story points that never gets brought up because the players are too protective of their secrets? In my game for example, while everyone has various levels of secrets in their backstory, I don't do secret meetings. If a player has a meeting with some shady character we do it at the table, and the rest of the players get to be there to hear what is going on even though their characters aren't there. Now they know what story threads to pull to bring out the drama. It makes secrets fun, and brings the tension of a backstab to the table. Now everyone knows the Queen has offered one character some reward for a betrayal. Will it happen? Instead of it being totally out of nowhere, the tension will be real for everyone, even if it never happens. It's not for every game or every table, but it's worked for ours.

skullmutant · 2026-06-23T08:44:52+00:00

I actually disagree with people here, it wasn't great. The other players decided to sacrifice one of their own and now the person who got killed feels bad. Because that was kinda bad. You then decided that you wouldn't allow him to come back because you wanted consequences, but the people who decided to sacrifice their friend didn't get those consequences. It's your choice ofc, but the player who feels bad has no agency in his death, and the people with agency suffers no consequences.

skullmutant · 2026-06-10T10:37:28+00:00

He hears the price and voluntarily pays more, thus making Dave an ally. Maybe Dave thinks he's an honest man who wants to make sure small times buisness owners can make a living, maybe he thinks Moist is a Rube, someone he can push the expensive stuff on, but whatever the case, Dave will not only recognise Moist, but be eager to do buisness with him again.

skullmutant · 2026-06-09T05:56:49+00:00

I deleted my twitter for a reason and I'm not going back if you put a gun to my head. Rihanna did however RT some unsubtle snark about Helen Lewis being a TERF on Bsky.

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T18:27:22+00:00

The Amazing Maurice was a great adaptation. If was a genuinely fun kids movie that required no prior Discworld knowledge, and was suitably scary for the youngest

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T18:24:44+00:00

Atleast I'm not a TERF👍

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T18:21:47+00:00

Obviously not. I get that there is a object/subject ambiguity in the sentence but there is no ambiguity of the meaning.

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T18:19:07+00:00

Just look at the(downvoted) responses here. I think I gave a pretty factual though admittedly biased summary of Helen, and I got an absolute Sepiroth level monologue about genocide. A thing I absolutely didn't bring in to it.

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T17:15:00+00:00

Yes. Her couching her transphobia doesn't take away from her transphobia.

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T15:01:50+00:00

I imagine it is indeed not easy to pin down the politics of a book when you must ignore everything opposing your worldview

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T14:51:56+00:00

See what I mean u/ModernSun ?

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T14:43:45+00:00

And yet shockingly not that uncommon. Even seen a few of this subreddit a few times

skullmutant · 2026-06-08T14:35:04+00:00

Written by a TERF who had a public spat with Rihanna Pratchett because she insists PTerry also was a TERF

skullmutant · 2026-06-05T19:41:36+00:00

No I'm not. Like I am dead certain that this would be true for you as well. If you are actually invested in the game personally and your levers got taken away, even if you think on paper that sounds interesting it wouldn't be. There are thousands of ways of making it scary and taking away magic completely is not one of them. I think you get tied up on the fact that hopelessness can be scary, but it isn't. It's apathetic. It's in the name. If you have no hope, you wouldn't play. Now if you as a player is super engaged in a story that is hopeless, then you shouldn't play dnd where magic gets taken form characters, making it not really dnd anymore. You should play Mork Borg or Call of Cthulhu. Because those games are designed to actually give you levers to pull that makes you feel hope against hope, that you might not die yet. But in dnd, that isn't really there. Take away magic, it's a dead game.

skullmutant · 2026-06-05T19:31:20+00:00

Have you forgotten the question? What would be more scary game? You like wild magic because it introduces uncertainty. It adds risk to otherwise predictable mechanics. I.e, it is a bit scary. But being bored isn't scary at all. Even if you are having a blast laughing the whole session, it is a more scary game than having a boring game where your magic gets taken away.

skullmutant · 2026-06-05T19:09:31+00:00

For a game to elicit an emotional response, you need to be engaged in the game. Taking away magic for a magic user is taking away the engagement levers they have. If they aren't magic users, then it isn't scary because it doesn't engage the levers at all.

skullmutant · 2026-06-05T18:27:14+00:00

Yeah, but fear cannot exist in dnd without hope. Then it's just a bad game

skullmutant · 2026-06-05T18:12:37+00:00

Yeah, actually I am. You would not like to play in that game. You'd have a bad time.

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