Recent content by Hriston

Compared to the other major peoples of the Material Plane, humans are... Short-lived. Their lifespans are slightly shorter than those of halflings, much shorter than those of dwarves, and like the blink of an eye when compared to the (near) immortality of elves, which is related to...

Read Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961) by Poul Anderson. It's a modern medieval fantasy take on the paladin and is THE source for the paladin class in D&D along with some other D&D-isms. It's also in Appendix N.

No one, not even the designers, is trying to override how you approach D&D.

You're speaking as though the 2014 background features are outside the "core" design of D&D, yet they're published in the PHB, one of the core rulebooks. They are part of how D&D is designed. People who don't play like you do aren't going against D&D's core.

Not "always", just when the feature's actually used does it work. If it's not a secret that the player's feature is offline, then why is the player trying to use it? Sounds dysfunctional. Why am I the only person who's ever been to Krynn from wherever it is I'm from?

I edited this for clarity since you seem to have taken a different meaning than I intended. Let's just say there's a pretty large difference between requesting clarification to increase understanding and posting a kneejerk reaction based on a lack thereof.

I agree the existence of such a sailor would be improbable. Luckily, the existence of Ship's Passage as a background feature does not imply the existence of such a sailor!

I'm not sure what part of what I said you're disagreeing with, but okay.

How is this different from the situation normally faced by adventurers without the relevant background feature? Because "Ravenloft" has been referenced in this thread as if its existence as an RPG setting is some kind of monolithic refutation of the validity of the 2014 background features...

Sure, but that isn't what was being discussed. A player dominating the table by constantly and repeatedly making action declarations that stipulate their PC knows this or that person in every place in which the party finds themselves, as has been conjectured in this thread, is not behaving...

No, sorry if I wasn't being clear, but that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is nonsensical is the fiction that the PC knows someone in every possible place or, coincidentally, in every place they visit which you extrapolate from the, to my mind, sensible fiction that the PC knows...

I agree with all of this. One way it might be related to what I wrote is constraining the rule might be seen as a way of constraining the potential fiction.

The 2014 background features were never a problem until someone criticized the new books for not including them. Then, all of a sudden, there were "reasons" they were bad and had to go.

So do I, and in my experience, so does the player. That you, apparently, can't think of a better explanation for the PC knowing the local messengers than they know them wherever they are or a one in a million chance isn't a problem with the feature. Remember, the group has agreed to imagine this...

So, you're imagining this thing, "I just so happen to know someone who lives there in basically every single location we visit", is happening in other people's games and then calling it weird, inconsistent, and illogical on "principle"? I'd just say mind your own business buddy!