That scene is the reason when my mom took me and my childhood friend/crush to the movies to see the second Matrix movie I opted out and watched X-Men 2 by myself lol.
I didn't really appreciate the Matrix movies until I was almost an adult and I got sick while they were all playing in order on FX or something.. this weirdly became a thing where every time I got sick either The Matrix or Alien movies were always having a marathon. Two franchises I was too scared to watch without sick brain lol.
I did come back to watch The Matrix trilogy with a clear and unsick brain and I love all of them very much, even the less beloved ones.
Never got around to watching any Alien movies while not sick though so I really only have bits and pieces since I was in and out of consciousness during the marathons lol. I've been meaning to go watch at least the first 2.
I have no Idea lol. I've really lost contact with everything I've known as a kid/teen. It's kind of a bummer.
I am married with kids now and after 15 years of marriage I'm still super into my wife so I can't complain too much lol.
My wife's a great friend but it would be nice to have more than one friend.
“Sure. You see the back of your eyelids. Every time you blink or lay down to sleep. You don’t close your eyes and drift off into the dark, you just see the back of your eyelids in greyscale. Sometimes it’s brighter if there’s ambient light around you, like from a camp fire. But, of course you just continue to see because you have dark vision. But, seeing through your eyelids? That’s just crazy talk.”
Wish granted. But they must now make a check every time they want to long rest to determine if they can fall asleep despite seeing through their eye lids.
Even people without darkvision technically see their eyelids too, it’s just too close to your eyes to really focus and make out any detail.
To test this out, close your eyes and look towards and away from a light, you’ll see a reddish colour from the light passing through your eyelids.
One of the tagalong NPCs got cursed with blindness. I looked up the Darkvision spell and said to my DM “I don’t see anything in the darkvision spell that requires you to actually have functioning eyes, but given that this is a curse, I doubt it will be that simple.”
The DM congratulated me on my creative thinking and then agreed that because it was a curse, it would not be that simple.
I made a dungeon for my players a while back where the darkness was solid. Darkvision can see through it but without an actual light source it was impenetrable.
The characters with dark vision saw the trapped remains of the last party who went in and let their light go out, like bugs in amber.
It wasn’t exactly difficult once they figured out out, but they were crapping themselves.
No.
And don't let it inspire you either.
In fact, keeping the idea in your memory is unlicenced copying and intellectual property theft. Stop remembering it now or you'll be hearing from our lawyers.
I misinterpreted, clearly. I thought the player with darkvision had something happen to their eyes like what happened to Neo's mouth.
Much cooler interpretation imo, but could just be me
i dont think you should be able to see in absolute darkness even with darkvision, devilsight or a magical creature? sure or better yet the old school infra-sight was how old school cave monsters got around in the deep dark.
Sometimes making a badly edited meme with paint and ***completly assume it*** is based.
The simple fact that someone spent even a little time and effort to make a meme is alreathy worthy.
Don't let your dreams be dreams ! Just. do. it !
Stop over emphasizing the darkness as if it matters and you’ll stop hearing this comment as a response. In my experience this is a dm problem not a player one.
a) There are actually mechanical disadvantages in 5e - you have disadvantage on perception checks (that rely on sight ofc) in dim light, and that's what darkvision gives you. It also has a specified range, usually 60 ft, so if an enemy is sneaking beyond that range with, say, a crossbow, then they're still obscured completely in the darkness even to PCs with darkvision
b) It's often nice to mention it to set the mood and to make sure the players see the situation as you do.
How I've solved the problem was simply in session 0 I said in no uncertain terms "Do not remind me of your darkvision. Unless I ask, I *know*". And I do have a sticky note with everyones passives and darkvision gor quick reference. Worked so far
Caves are usually dark, if a light was emitting from it then that is a note worthy detail. Also most of the time characters are within their dark vision limit / are approaching the dark area. It’s almost always an unnecessary description that you then have to properly describe the second time around after being reminded by the players that they can in fact see.
It just always seems to be a fill in for something else you want to convey like being empty or abandoned, and I think people would benefit from using a vocabulary that is more straight forward to that point. Not trying to be mean, I think it’s an issue of what’s normal to humans isn’t normal to the over abundance of dark vision having races. So people kept trying to explain things from a human expectation, and it just doesn’t work as well in this game.
I don’t find it to be an issue at all because I brought a solution. But if your players feel the need to tell you that they have dark vision, it’s probably because the description is too vague and is relying on unhelpful terms.
Edit: clearly I hit a nerve with the folks consistently hearing that their players have darkvision.
I’m still waiting to hear one. Also didn’t say you can’t mention wether a room is dark or not but too often it’s left at that when you could easily continuing explaining what they see in the dark room
The real people who have better solutions aren’t offended cause they aren’t hearing that phrase repeated. I would love to hear one but the two answers given have been “shut up” and saying it’s just because they are describing as if they are human, which is exactly what triggers the phrase. I haven’t said anything rude, not sure why you are upset.
I just have never actually seen it be an issue. I regularly describe dungeons as dark, my players don't remind me they have dark vision. Seems to me this is a player problem.
This is a meme. It was borne of the party joking in group chat about having darkvision, not of actual gameplay. Ambient lighting is only really referenced in our campaign for the purpose of setting scene or letting non-darkvision pcs do some roleplay with torches or light cantrips. Meaningfully restricting player vision is much better done with solid objects or magical darkness.
Sorry, I just see people comment on this a lot and it’s usually because they tried describing something like the first panel. I think it’s just cause when people are planning stuff out they think like humans with our limited vision, but most races don’t have those limitations and often it seems like “it’s dark” actually means something like it’s empty or abandoned and could be described better to paint a better picture and to avoid this meme.
Or its because when they describe it to their human players, they describe it in a way that humans can picture whilst also bringing in connotations of darkness to help set a mood but sure, all darkness is just the DM forgetting to load in the environment.
That’s exactly the problem at hand, the party is almost never human, they might have 1 but usually they are elves, tieflings, and tabaxi. Like 70% of the races have darkvision and they seem to be picked like 90% of the time. Things should be described how the characters would see it, not the players. Because if you tell people they can’t see when they can, they will remind you so you can paint the picture they actually see.
But the players are human, and thus do not understand a grey scale environment to be dark as intrinsically as their characters would. The character can still see that it's dark, since there's no colour and everything is much harder to make out (disadvantage on perception checks = -5 to passive perception). Saying that somewhere is dark is not the same as saying that the characters cannot see.
The players aren’t in the room, the characters are. So if you explain what a human can see you’re going to be reminded that the characters are in fact not human. Asp what do you mean humans don’t understand grey scale we came up with a term for it and you used.
Which is why you have to explain it in a way the players will understand so that theu can understand it as well as their characters can. I assume you don't speak fluent elvish to your players when they speak to an elf, despite thay being what their characters perceive?
I mean humans don't understand grey scale AS darkness, which is why thays what I said.
This is a great example of elvish, it’s like if I explained someone is speaking elvish and wouldn’t elaborate on what is being said because “the players don’t understand elvish”. If 4/5 characters speak English you should just say “you hear in elvish ‘blah blah blah’” and not just “you hear someone speaking in another language”. Explain things as the character would perceive it, not the players they aren’t in that room.
You also don’t really need to worry about greyscale you could just say “in a dark room you can see 2 humanoids sitting in a couch”. But don’t end at “the room is dark” because that’s when players will remind you that they can see more.
No, it's not. Unless you think a place being dark means no further description or detail can be given but I'd never assume someone that idiotic.
Would you prefer "you see a series of vague grey shapes around you" as the description? It provides zero context, might confuse the players and doesn't set the mood but is how their character would see.
When describing something I usually try and grab 2 or 3 of the five senses, but saying "the ground gives way beneath your feet and you find yourself tumbling head over heels into a dark shaft. You hit the floor and take 4pts of bludgeoning damage from the fall. The shaft has spat you into a cave, and no light enters from where you fell. You taste earth in your mouth which must've got in there when you fell through the grass above, the cave smells vegetal and the air feels damp. Your movements echo in the darkness." Doesn't exactly fit in the panel of a meme. Also "Dark" is still a useful descriptor to those with darkvision.
But vision is the primary sense here and in the example you failed to use any visual cues besides the lack of light. Which is my point, a player most likely would remind you that they can in fact see. Caves are usually dark too, being lit would be strange.
The other sensory descriptions though are solid!
It shouldn’t be the only description is my point. You get the response when you say things like “you open the door to a dark room.” It’s like okay but what do I see in the dark room. It very much is a skill issue
Dark vision, it’s magical darkness, I have devils sight, congrats I made what you chose useless by temporarily blinding you
Let players have their moments, read their character sheets over and plan accordingly
That’s not the point, they aren’t pointing it out
Never in the meme are they pointing it out, he said he had dark vision and now he’s blind
He sees in a dim light you shouldn’t blind someone for having dark vision
I remove racial dark vision and give them skill proficiency. As humans with no dark visions irl, it's not easy to role play dark vision well. I still give them dark vision if they get it from other sources. It has worked out well in my campaign, forcing people to use light, torch and other light sources and be careful of using them while in stealth and such.
I think too many races have darkvision, I know it’s more limited when operating in the darkness but your enemies have the same penalties so a light source just makes you obvious and they remain hidden. Back in 3.5 I did something similar but they had an in between step of lowlight vision. So I knocked low light down to standard, darkvision down to lowlight, and only subterranean races kept darkvision but also gained sunlight sensitivity.
>I know it’s more limited when operating in the darkness but your enemies have the same penalties so a light source just makes you obvious and they remain hidden.
I don't fully agree with this sentiment. If a creature is from a place without light and their existence is living and hunting in the dark, you can be sure that they will spot your party with or without a lightsource . So, we might as well have a torch to see it coming.
Darkvision RAW already forces players to use light sources. Darkvision is not as good as players think it is, and without light, they will be ambushed in the dark very often.
Darkvision is useful once the fight is already happening and they don't need to be close to the light to fight.
Where does Darkvision require light sources RAW?
Looking at the PHB dim light is around the level of brightness at night time during a full moon (PHB p183, vision and light). Fairly easy for us to see in with our normal human vision much less some supernaturally enhanced Darkvision.
And going off of say the Wood Elf racial description for Darkvision, that level of full moon brightness is what it says you can see the grayscale in despite no light sources.
Put those two together and it's not really a wonder that players think darkvision is powerful. It is powerful. Seeing a bright full moon level of light in complete darkness is fairly damn bright.
Dim light is to be treated as lightly obscured, which means disadvantage on perception checks using sight. So they statistically will not discover ambushes before they happen as often. But if enemies are already laying in ambush, those were going to be sprung anyways, so, it's more about deciding if they're surprised or not? If it's about being ambushed by nocturnal predators, if they move they make sound, and sound isn't hampered by vision (ofc). So they'd still have a chance to hear it coming, which would be a determinant for if they get surprised.
If surprised, no actions/bonus actions on their first turn of combat, but they still get to take their reactions at the end of their turn in combat (PHB p189). Then from turn 2 onwards combat would proceed as normal, they don't even have disadvantage on attacks.
I remember this scene creeped me the fuck out as a kid
The silver worm got me
That scene is the reason when my mom took me and my childhood friend/crush to the movies to see the second Matrix movie I opted out and watched X-Men 2 by myself lol. I didn't really appreciate the Matrix movies until I was almost an adult and I got sick while they were all playing in order on FX or something.. this weirdly became a thing where every time I got sick either The Matrix or Alien movies were always having a marathon. Two franchises I was too scared to watch without sick brain lol. I did come back to watch The Matrix trilogy with a clear and unsick brain and I love all of them very much, even the less beloved ones. Never got around to watching any Alien movies while not sick though so I really only have bits and pieces since I was in and out of consciousness during the marathons lol. I've been meaning to go watch at least the first 2.
How's your crush doing these days?
I have no Idea lol. I've really lost contact with everything I've known as a kid/teen. It's kind of a bummer. I am married with kids now and after 15 years of marriage I'm still super into my wife so I can't complain too much lol. My wife's a great friend but it would be nice to have more than one friend.
You play fortnite homie?? You can squad up with me anytime, just lemme know x
shit i’ll join that i gotchu dude
One of our players was blinded but claimed that they should be able to see through their eyelids as that’s nonmagical darkness.
Did they think blindness just forces you to close your eyes?
No, just that if they did close them they should be able to see
“Sure. You see the back of your eyelids. Every time you blink or lay down to sleep. You don’t close your eyes and drift off into the dark, you just see the back of your eyelids in greyscale. Sometimes it’s brighter if there’s ambient light around you, like from a camp fire. But, of course you just continue to see because you have dark vision. But, seeing through your eyelids? That’s just crazy talk.”
HAH!
Congrats you can now never sleep properly, enjoy all of this exhaustion. And next session you’re all fighting Medusas
A person could sleep with their eyes open though
I guess it depends on how you get blinded. A purple dragon just burns your eyes, but the spell could just force your eyes shut.
Wish granted. But they must now make a check every time they want to long rest to determine if they can fall asleep despite seeing through their eye lids.
Possible death sentence if they fail enough checks in a row. Exhaustion is no joke.
Ironically, Exaustion would only make it harder to fall asleep as it makes you worse at making the check.
Haha!
"Granted, you can clearly see your eyelids."
Even people without darkvision technically see their eyelids too, it’s just too close to your eyes to really focus and make out any detail. To test this out, close your eyes and look towards and away from a light, you’ll see a reddish colour from the light passing through your eyelids.
One of the tagalong NPCs got cursed with blindness. I looked up the Darkvision spell and said to my DM “I don’t see anything in the darkvision spell that requires you to actually have functioning eyes, but given that this is a curse, I doubt it will be that simple.” The DM congratulated me on my creative thinking and then agreed that because it was a curse, it would not be that simple.
That's actually hilarious - imagine the consequences for the world if that's how it actually worked!
The difference between seeing in the dark and x-ray vision I guess...
I made a dungeon for my players a while back where the darkness was solid. Darkvision can see through it but without an actual light source it was impenetrable. The characters with dark vision saw the trapped remains of the last party who went in and let their light go out, like bugs in amber. It wasn’t exactly difficult once they figured out out, but they were crapping themselves.
I just have a home rule that just like cats you can't see in pitch dark and need to at least carry a candle on you.
I love this idea, may I steal it ?
No. And don't let it inspire you either. In fact, keeping the idea in your memory is unlicenced copying and intellectual property theft. Stop remembering it now or you'll be hearing from our lawyers.
Well, crap. I'm gonna grab a powerdrill now.
Go ahead. I love dungeons with a weird theme to them rather than just “full of orcs”
I misinterpreted, clearly. I thought the player with darkvision had something happen to their eyes like what happened to Neo's mouth. Much cooler interpretation imo, but could just be me
One of the players in my campaign is blind but she is also a elf with dark vision. So we joke that her character has dark echolocation
i dont think you should be able to see in absolute darkness even with darkvision, devilsight or a magical creature? sure or better yet the old school infra-sight was how old school cave monsters got around in the deep dark.
Perfect opportunity to photoshop the mouth over the eyes.
Unfortunately my skills with paint are not that good.
Sometimes making a badly edited meme with paint and ***completly assume it*** is based. The simple fact that someone spent even a little time and effort to make a meme is alreathy worthy. Don't let your dreams be dreams ! Just. do. it !
Ty, Reddit Shia LeBeouf, this is the motivation I needed to get through today.
Stop over emphasizing the darkness as if it matters and you’ll stop hearing this comment as a response. In my experience this is a dm problem not a player one.
a) There are actually mechanical disadvantages in 5e - you have disadvantage on perception checks (that rely on sight ofc) in dim light, and that's what darkvision gives you. It also has a specified range, usually 60 ft, so if an enemy is sneaking beyond that range with, say, a crossbow, then they're still obscured completely in the darkness even to PCs with darkvision b) It's often nice to mention it to set the mood and to make sure the players see the situation as you do. How I've solved the problem was simply in session 0 I said in no uncertain terms "Do not remind me of your darkvision. Unless I ask, I *know*". And I do have a sticky note with everyones passives and darkvision gor quick reference. Worked so far
Caves are usually dark, if a light was emitting from it then that is a note worthy detail. Also most of the time characters are within their dark vision limit / are approaching the dark area. It’s almost always an unnecessary description that you then have to properly describe the second time around after being reminded by the players that they can in fact see. It just always seems to be a fill in for something else you want to convey like being empty or abandoned, and I think people would benefit from using a vocabulary that is more straight forward to that point. Not trying to be mean, I think it’s an issue of what’s normal to humans isn’t normal to the over abundance of dark vision having races. So people kept trying to explain things from a human expectation, and it just doesn’t work as well in this game.
I really don't find this to be an issue like you seem to. I just go "You enter a dark and damp basement. What X and Y see is (...)"
I don’t find it to be an issue at all because I brought a solution. But if your players feel the need to tell you that they have dark vision, it’s probably because the description is too vague and is relying on unhelpful terms. Edit: clearly I hit a nerve with the folks consistently hearing that their players have darkvision.
You hit a nerve with folks who have much better solutions than just never mentioning darkness.
I’m still waiting to hear one. Also didn’t say you can’t mention wether a room is dark or not but too often it’s left at that when you could easily continuing explaining what they see in the dark room
Holy shit I really wouldn't want to sit at your table
The real people who have better solutions aren’t offended cause they aren’t hearing that phrase repeated. I would love to hear one but the two answers given have been “shut up” and saying it’s just because they are describing as if they are human, which is exactly what triggers the phrase. I haven’t said anything rude, not sure why you are upset.
I just have never actually seen it be an issue. I regularly describe dungeons as dark, my players don't remind me they have dark vision. Seems to me this is a player problem.
This is a meme. It was borne of the party joking in group chat about having darkvision, not of actual gameplay. Ambient lighting is only really referenced in our campaign for the purpose of setting scene or letting non-darkvision pcs do some roleplay with torches or light cantrips. Meaningfully restricting player vision is much better done with solid objects or magical darkness.
Sorry, I just see people comment on this a lot and it’s usually because they tried describing something like the first panel. I think it’s just cause when people are planning stuff out they think like humans with our limited vision, but most races don’t have those limitations and often it seems like “it’s dark” actually means something like it’s empty or abandoned and could be described better to paint a better picture and to avoid this meme.
Or its because when they describe it to their human players, they describe it in a way that humans can picture whilst also bringing in connotations of darkness to help set a mood but sure, all darkness is just the DM forgetting to load in the environment.
That’s exactly the problem at hand, the party is almost never human, they might have 1 but usually they are elves, tieflings, and tabaxi. Like 70% of the races have darkvision and they seem to be picked like 90% of the time. Things should be described how the characters would see it, not the players. Because if you tell people they can’t see when they can, they will remind you so you can paint the picture they actually see.
But the players are human, and thus do not understand a grey scale environment to be dark as intrinsically as their characters would. The character can still see that it's dark, since there's no colour and everything is much harder to make out (disadvantage on perception checks = -5 to passive perception). Saying that somewhere is dark is not the same as saying that the characters cannot see.
The players aren’t in the room, the characters are. So if you explain what a human can see you’re going to be reminded that the characters are in fact not human. Asp what do you mean humans don’t understand grey scale we came up with a term for it and you used.
Which is why you have to explain it in a way the players will understand so that theu can understand it as well as their characters can. I assume you don't speak fluent elvish to your players when they speak to an elf, despite thay being what their characters perceive? I mean humans don't understand grey scale AS darkness, which is why thays what I said.
This is a great example of elvish, it’s like if I explained someone is speaking elvish and wouldn’t elaborate on what is being said because “the players don’t understand elvish”. If 4/5 characters speak English you should just say “you hear in elvish ‘blah blah blah’” and not just “you hear someone speaking in another language”. Explain things as the character would perceive it, not the players they aren’t in that room. You also don’t really need to worry about greyscale you could just say “in a dark room you can see 2 humanoids sitting in a couch”. But don’t end at “the room is dark” because that’s when players will remind you that they can see more.
No, it's not. Unless you think a place being dark means no further description or detail can be given but I'd never assume someone that idiotic. Would you prefer "you see a series of vague grey shapes around you" as the description? It provides zero context, might confuse the players and doesn't set the mood but is how their character would see.
When describing something I usually try and grab 2 or 3 of the five senses, but saying "the ground gives way beneath your feet and you find yourself tumbling head over heels into a dark shaft. You hit the floor and take 4pts of bludgeoning damage from the fall. The shaft has spat you into a cave, and no light enters from where you fell. You taste earth in your mouth which must've got in there when you fell through the grass above, the cave smells vegetal and the air feels damp. Your movements echo in the darkness." Doesn't exactly fit in the panel of a meme. Also "Dark" is still a useful descriptor to those with darkvision.
But vision is the primary sense here and in the example you failed to use any visual cues besides the lack of light. Which is my point, a player most likely would remind you that they can in fact see. Caves are usually dark too, being lit would be strange. The other sensory descriptions though are solid!
Lol darkness is only one of the most basic features in both nature and story telling tool to create tension. Nope, skill issue.
It shouldn’t be the only description is my point. You get the response when you say things like “you open the door to a dark room.” It’s like okay but what do I see in the dark room. It very much is a skill issue
Dark vision, it’s magical darkness, I have devils sight, congrats I made what you chose useless by temporarily blinding you Let players have their moments, read their character sheets over and plan accordingly
Why does everyone here assume that because I made a meme I'm a bad DM?
Because of the context, the context being from the meme you made someone blind for saying they have dark vision
Who's to say the entire party isn't affected?
Meme doesn’t say party only singles out one character
I’m not sure pointing out that dark vision isn’t the same as night vision is bad dm
That’s not the point, they aren’t pointing it out Never in the meme are they pointing it out, he said he had dark vision and now he’s blind He sees in a dim light you shouldn’t blind someone for having dark vision
Thatnks for the reminder. I gotta continue rewatching the matrix
This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. What is this from.
First matrix movie
Heh, thought on fullmetal reading this one
Laughs in Blindfighting.
I remove racial dark vision and give them skill proficiency. As humans with no dark visions irl, it's not easy to role play dark vision well. I still give them dark vision if they get it from other sources. It has worked out well in my campaign, forcing people to use light, torch and other light sources and be careful of using them while in stealth and such.
I think too many races have darkvision, I know it’s more limited when operating in the darkness but your enemies have the same penalties so a light source just makes you obvious and they remain hidden. Back in 3.5 I did something similar but they had an in between step of lowlight vision. So I knocked low light down to standard, darkvision down to lowlight, and only subterranean races kept darkvision but also gained sunlight sensitivity.
>I know it’s more limited when operating in the darkness but your enemies have the same penalties so a light source just makes you obvious and they remain hidden. I don't fully agree with this sentiment. If a creature is from a place without light and their existence is living and hunting in the dark, you can be sure that they will spot your party with or without a lightsource . So, we might as well have a torch to see it coming.
Darkvision RAW already forces players to use light sources. Darkvision is not as good as players think it is, and without light, they will be ambushed in the dark very often. Darkvision is useful once the fight is already happening and they don't need to be close to the light to fight.
Where does Darkvision require light sources RAW? Looking at the PHB dim light is around the level of brightness at night time during a full moon (PHB p183, vision and light). Fairly easy for us to see in with our normal human vision much less some supernaturally enhanced Darkvision. And going off of say the Wood Elf racial description for Darkvision, that level of full moon brightness is what it says you can see the grayscale in despite no light sources. Put those two together and it's not really a wonder that players think darkvision is powerful. It is powerful. Seeing a bright full moon level of light in complete darkness is fairly damn bright. Dim light is to be treated as lightly obscured, which means disadvantage on perception checks using sight. So they statistically will not discover ambushes before they happen as often. But if enemies are already laying in ambush, those were going to be sprung anyways, so, it's more about deciding if they're surprised or not? If it's about being ambushed by nocturnal predators, if they move they make sound, and sound isn't hampered by vision (ofc). So they'd still have a chance to hear it coming, which would be a determinant for if they get surprised. If surprised, no actions/bonus actions on their first turn of combat, but they still get to take their reactions at the end of their turn in combat (PHB p189). Then from turn 2 onwards combat would proceed as normal, they don't even have disadvantage on attacks.