Notices by rdonoghue (rdonoghue@dice.camp), page 2

A big reason we keep using Miro for our virtual tabletop is that it makes it so easy for players to add contributions. As a game progresses, the battle maps become a smaller and smaller portion of the sprawling content as we add in notes, drawings, NPC images, stories or whatever else comes up. By the end of the game, it’s a big messy record of everything that happened, and that is delightful.

Few things deaden my soul like hearing committees described as communities of practice.

Is there a word for the situation where a security precaution becomes a threat vector? On my mind because of the volume of scams that work because caller id is easily spoofed - people might be more skeptical if there weren’t a trusted gatekeeper giving them false information.

Makes me think of the Everway card, Drowning in Armor, but I’m sure there must be an actual phrase for it.

Point of random curiosity: In 5e D&D, what do high level characters do?

No snark in the question - I'm genuinely thinking through the feel of high level play, since I've never gotten past low teens at the table. So, I know they can just go into bigger dungeons, sure, and even if they're not well supported, it wouldn't be hard to bring in stronghold building, or Birthright rules.

So my core question is: beyond those things, what do high level 5e characters *do*? (If anything).

Re-emphasizing, this isn't a question for snark. It's definitely an interesting space in 5e, and I don't feel like the game as written has a lot to say on it, but I'm asking the question because I suspect that people have found interesting answers.

It's on my mind because I keep toying with the prospect of running a level 17ish game that is more in line with heroic fantasy fiction than the D&D genre. I think it's *mechanically* doable, and I think it's a fun line of thinking.

But in practice, I worry about it landing with a dull thud.

The go to way to drive action for that sort of play is, of course, to raise the stakes. Threats escalate from the town to the nation to the whole world. Set pieces get more epic. And that's definitely fun, but it's also not the direction I'm thinking.

I want high levels to ENABLE those things, but I also want them to be part of the landscape, not constant fonts of drama.

And, of course, I also want an opportunity for players to actually *engage* with the things high level play enables, rather than have them be the things that show up at the very END of a game.

Somewhat tellingly, I'm not entirely sure how that's going to feel in play. And that uncertainty drives my curiosity in finding out.

Anyway, that is why I'm asking for peoples thoughts and experiences about the directions high level play has gone in 5e. Trying to figure out if this idea is worth pursuing, or if I should just set it aside. Thanks in advance! #DnD

I've been randomly researching the history of irrigation, because it fascinates me and because I love looking into such things and thinking about how they interact with adventure design.

For example, early canals were often mud or dirt embnkments on both sides, and when you needed water from it, you literally dig a hole, then filled it back in when you are done.

Think about what happens when a monster starts living in one of those! So many interesting (non-dungeony) possibilities!

That has lead to me thinking a little bit about the essential nature of D&D settings, and kind of crystallized something I've always sort of known. In much the same way that D&D's combat isn't *supposed* to be coherent or realistic, it's setting are also built on a similar level of deliberate incoherence.

(Thread follows, but going to set it quiet).

So, there is a specific sort of ahistory which you can see in most D&D settings (and which many more thought out setting deliberately avoid) which is to make it technologically historical, but conceptually contemporary.

That is to say, people are running around with swords and horses, but they also have modern ideas of things like refridgeration, urban planning, hygiene, politics and so on. That is to say, it's *comfortable* for a modern (american) person to think about.

The easy handwave for this is "magic!", but that doesn't really hold up under any scrutiny. Taking the time to think about the social implications of magic as it exists in the game can be a really fun thought experiment, but it also tends to result in moving the setting *away* from the comfortable space of play, so it rarely moves beyond the thought experiment.

This is, I should note, totally understandable. For most D&D players, they aren't looking to die from the plague or to be treated like chattel, nor are they looking to see these things happen around them.

Now, what's interesting is there are a few different rivers of thought that can shape this, each of which is a little interesting.

The first is just lazy modernity. I'm a big fan of this one, because I *like* modernity, so I am ok with finding excuses for anachronistic toilets and foodstuffs.

But there is also a streak of historical idealization that can show up. This can include "Romans were awesome!", which is shaky but has a logic. It also can include folks who think that kings were the right idea because they can only imagine themselves at the top of the social stack.

At best, this is simple romanticism, which is fine. Pendragon is a great game and built on a specific focus.

At worst, this is outright creepy stuff that can be rooted in various flavors of supremism. It can be similar to "Ancient Alien" theories - as a kid, they're cool, because aliens. But as you get older, you start noticing the theories dovetail with "There's no way THOSE PEOPLE could have done math!"

I zoom out to that because it casts something interesting into relief. There's no real way to separate technical and non-technical advancement, nor is there a "correct" model to make this make sense.

Which is FINE. We're playing pretend!

But it then makes it clear that these decisions are *deliberate* ones, not some sort of inevitable force of history.

Which, in turn, casts a particular light when someone decides a setting "must" have. Especially when that must-have is something like slavery.

The idea that it's mandated because of "history" becomes a more obvious veneer for another motive (something that gets REALLY obvious as one watched more and more Isekai anime).

Now, I'll call out that this is not always deliberate. The sleight of hand we pull on ourselves to make setting "feel" coherent can result in us actually believing arguments based in history. It's a very compelling bit of self-deception, and I know I have ABSOLUTELY fallen victim to it at various points in time, based on my own ideas about what is "coherent".

And this invites an apparent contradiction: if a setting is going to be ahistorical, pretty much no matter what, why bother thinking about actual history or technology or ideas or any such things?

And the answer is, of course, that these are things that make a setting more awesome. The problem is not the presence or absence of "history" or "realism", but rather who is calling this particular dance.

Your setting, like your system, has a purpose. You can attempt to shape that purpose with "realism", or you can use reality to lean into and enhance that purpose.

The former is pedantically satisfying.

The latter is fun.