Aye, but it’s less work for the DM when mechanics are invented by the game designers instead of by themselves, and options with hard-coded mechanics are often more appealing to players than being forced to rely on DM fiat.
DM fiat is the greatest tool the DM has, and unless it's in the hands of a bad DM(rare), it's good for the players, too. Too many try to use it as if it were a bad word.
If you think that people who desired more robust mechanics did not exist simply because you didn’t encounter them, you are fooling yourself. What’s the saying about D&D spawning a million game designers who all wanted to make D&D with one thing changed? There have always been, and will always be, people dissatisfied with any set of RPG rules.
I didn't say that they didn't exist. What I implied, and am saying straight out now, is that if I didn't encounter them given the sheer numbers of D&D players I encountered, the complainers were in a small minority.
There is a world of difference between acknowledgment and support. The 5e rules acknowledge the option of magic marts. They do almost nothing to support that option.
Acknowledgement and suggestions ARE support, even if meager. And I will absolutely grant you that the 5e support on this is very meager.
There’s a difference between the game not going where you move it, and “whatever you do is what the story is about.” And a railroad is only a problem when you don’t want to be going where it’s taking you.
Unless the players have explicitly agreed to ride the railroad, a railroad is always a problem.
Well, yeah, at that point it’s your job as the DM to change course, as you don’t want to be running an adventure your players aren’t interested in. Again, that’s very different from letting the players take the helm. You say you wouldn’t want purely reactive players, and I agree, but I also wouldn’t want )and wouldn’t want to be) a purely reactive DM.
It's actually a lot of fun. You still get to build encounters and stories. They just pertain to what the players have originated as their goals. If the players suddenly decide to go to the Northern Barbarian Tribes and take them over, you prepare for that. If during that story they become fast friends with some of the barbarians and shift from take-over to ally, and then join them to fight the frost giants, you prepare for that. You're reactive, but still creating stories and encounters, and at the same time the PCs truly are the driving force of the story, rather than just being along for the ride.
Great. Then if I’m in your game, I’m not wasting my money on lifestyles. I’ll go with Squallid, or subsist off the land with Survival, because if the more expensive lifestyles aren’t useful to me in the fun part of the game, then I’ll save my resources for something that is. Which means pretty much once I’ve bought the best armor in the category of my choice, I don’t have much to spend my gold on. A few silver here and there to restock on ammunition and rations, maybe. Maybe a few copper for lamp oil if I don’t have darkvision. And then the rest is pretty much useless to me. I guess I can bribe guards with fistfuls of platinum, because what the hell else am I doing with this money?
If you were in my game, you'd probably quit. The "fun part of the game" is only about a third to half, depending on the situation, of my game. The rest is the "amazingly fun part of the game"
Can you not see how, if you have even one player who feels this way, your game’s economy has a problem?
I would encourage that sort of player to go find a more compatible game. Not out of any kind of malice, but because people should enjoy themselves when playing D&D. My game wouldn't be to that person's liking, but someone else's would be.
See, now we’re talking. This is the kind of thing the book needs to be explicit about if it wants a not insignificant portion of players (and DMs) to care about downtime expenses.
I strongly disagree with this. When you codify that sort of thing, you are stifling creativity. People see that the book lays out A, B, and C as the ways to use aristocracy, which causes them to not even try to think up D-Z, which are also ways to use aristocracy. If the game is going to go into this at all, it should just be some sort of vague statement to the players and DM to be creative with how the uses for gold can impact the game in a positive manner for the PCs.
Encourage the creativity. Don't stifle it.
