Who Is Ellen - 67 - HD
Added 2022-12-03 04:00:03 +0000 UTCCommentary
OF COURSE!
Also, Unnamed NPC Guard is still considerate with implied social distancing.
Comments
Before microbes were known, the dominant Western theory of the origins of disease was the "Miasma theory"--basically, diseases were caused by toxins which could be absorbed by touching, licking, eating, or breathing the vapors from a creature/person who had the disease. People understood that diseases were spread by contact with infected people--they just didn't know the actual agent that did the spreading. Plague doctors wore those bird-like masks to protect themselves, which had a sort of filter and deodorizer in the "beak" which prevented them from inhaling the "miasma" (or germs) decently enough, the same as modern surgical masks.
ijuinkun
2022-12-05 09:13:35 +0000 UTCI mean, it does, right? That's just how string concatenation works. I mean, you wouldn't expect a+b = cat, right?
Some Ed
2022-12-04 10:01:34 +0000 UTCI've had players focus on some description fluff before and ignore the planned plot hook so badly that the adventure never actually started. And to be honest, I expected Rich to be one to derail the plot, not Larry.
Wild Card
2022-12-04 01:43:36 +0000 UTCIt may be possible to hand-wave some modern knowledge into a D&D medieval world, but it's also not that hard to come up with a magical world whose physics differ from ours enough that said knowledge was as useful as homeopathy is in ours. I mean, which is the easier fantasy world? One that simply predates microscopes, so understanding based on them is not locally grasped but potentially useful to visitors from our world, or one that is effectively modern, so things like memes and stuff are well known, but for which the microscopic doesn't really exist, so microscopes are useless? In the former fantasy world, magic is tacked on, so it requires some suspension of disbelief to avoid tripping over the uneven edges where the groundwork doesn't 100% line up. In the latter world, magic is part of physics. Illness is not from microscopic pathogens, those don't exist. Illness is malevolent magic, so it's logical that it could be cured with benevolent magic. Also, a mixture of bird droppings and saltpeter is just disgusting, not explosive. You want explosive, you need a mage or a proper alchemist, no half-assing it with stuff you can simply find and which you, the player, know how to put it together despite the fact your character has no clue. With one of these options, the GM is subject to the possibly more sophisticated knowledge of the real world of their players. Regardless of whether the player actually knows the world better, the GM has to be on the defensive to avoid the players making use of knowledge their characters do not have to sidestep major parts of the story. With the other option, the GM is in control. The GM is the only authority on what works within the physical laws of their world, so the players cannot reference some other authority for a leg up. The GM only needs to go into exactly how things work to the point that makes sense for the story. They don't even really have to say what exactly the alchemist in the party is mixing up, even if the players have to find the stuff. "You need to find the ingredients the alchemist needs." should be sufficient. The alchemist knows what they are. The other players wouldn't understand what they are, so mentioning that detail is irrelevant.
Some Ed
2022-12-03 22:14:40 +0000 UTCThat is what my playing group call doing 2+2=22. But sometime playing around with those strange theories is to fun not to change the plot and use them.
Diego Rossi
2022-12-03 18:49:46 +0000 UTCThe Bible tells people to wear a cloth across the lower part of the face when plague is involved. It is not a recent or high-tech concept.
Carl Fink
2022-12-03 16:15:11 +0000 UTCNaw! That was all just the pre-derailing! Now begins the proper derailing where the players go well and truly off script!
KC
2022-12-03 09:53:13 +0000 UTCBegins? I thought it had already begun, and this is just continuing it. Though, to be fair, as an experienced GM, I'm kind of impressed she managed to get them all to the originally intended quest giver without any combat or unscheduled wilderness exploration first. I mean, I think I got lucky with my first party. Oh, wait, no, I started them *at* the quest giver. I explained the quest before I described the room they were in. (To be fair, I was a player before I was a GM. I knew what easily distracted fools I was dealing with.)
Some Ed
2022-12-03 08:41:15 +0000 UTCAnd so the derailing begins!
KC
2022-12-03 08:14:48 +0000 UTCThe guard also knew that wearing a mask would help.
Dan Merget
2022-12-03 04:50:30 +0000 UTCOne of the many good tools we use to keep the story running
AstroChaos
2022-12-03 04:45:06 +0000 UTCOr they could be unaware of microbes but still aware that proximity is a risk factor.
Stephen Gilberg
2022-12-03 04:43:16 +0000 UTCit's so simple a simpleton could've figured it out, unless.....
Jere
2022-12-03 04:41:51 +0000 UTCThat's true, at least in our history. But thanks to magic, it's possible to hand-wave some modern knowledge into a D&D medieval world. There were probably at least a few people with divination spells who explored questions like "What causes disease" and "How can we prevent a plague from spreading". So people could be aware of bacteria and viruses, while still lacking the technology to observe germs directly, or even any concept of the scientific method.
Dan Merget
2022-12-03 04:41:33 +0000 UTCHard to say if this the time for one of the classic GM maneuvers (specifically: "yes, that's exactly what happened" *quietly crosses out contradictory section of existing notes*) without knowing the intended plot already.
Jared Fattmann
2022-12-03 04:30:43 +0000 UTCThat's a pretty savvy guard for a pseudo-medieval setting.
Stephen Gilberg
2022-12-03 04:03:32 +0000 UTC
