D&D 5E World-Building DMs

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Greg K]

And there is no game without Players. The DM gets thousands of characters so why kick up a fuss about the Players one character.

While my group is always with six players, I have introduced people one-on-one or in a group of two players and myself. A good game can be had with one or two players players on-board and a DM if need be. So, if that one player is not on board and there is at least one other player onboard, a good game can still be had.

 

[Shasarak]

While my group is always with six players, I have introduced people one-on-one or in a group of two players and myself. A good game can be had with one or two players players on-board and a DM if need be. So, if that one player is not on board and there is at least one other player onboard, a good game can still be had.

DMing is neither Rocket Science nor Brain Surgery.

There are even games that do not need a DM so even without a DM onboard a good game can still be had.

 

[Phantarch]

I think this is a 3e created problem, as a side effect of WotC selling their system down the river in exchange for short term profit. The third edition era was incredibly prolific in terms of rules supplements, and each rules supplement - no matter how DM centered the content would appear to be - usually had in it a considerable amount of player centered character building options. The reasoning is obvious. There are a lot more players than DMs.

Back in the 1e era, the player could get away with buying only a PH and maybe an UA (and not even that if they were content to play non-spellcasters). The rest of the books were DM tools. Any supplemental material - say from Dragon - would need to be explicitly approved. In the 2e edition era, the focus on the DM as the target of publications largely continued. While there were some relatively minor nods to generic customization in the form of kit classes, most offered very little in the way of specific mechanical benefit, and were easy to brush over. The majority of highly specific customization was specific to a setting, and so went with the setting with no expectation that it necessarily ported to any other one. But in the 3e era, the goal appeared to be to sell as many books as possible to players by making the game rules much more player centric. That makes economic sense in the short run, but eventually crippled the game with rules bloat, poorly thought out rules, dysfunctional rules interactions, impossible to balance CharGen, at least three versions of every archetype. In the midst of this you had players with the quite understandable perception that since they'd bought the book, that they should be able to make use of it. Keeping track of this insanity involved very high levels of implicit social contracts regarding exactly to what extent and how you were allowed to break the game.

So now you have a lot of players out there with the experience that if it has been published, it's fair game and further that it's somewhat baffling why that wouldn't be true.

Devil's advocate, but I think the overwhelming amount of supplemental material was the proof that you absolutely needed DM approval before making character decisions. No DM should have been expected to incorporate any and every book published in that era, and that held true with the people I played with.

Personally, I think entitlement is an issue divorced from edition.


EDIT: Devil's advocate to myself...most of the people I've played with started with 1e or 2e.

 

[Fedge123]

That's a fascinating way to look at it. See, having grown up with BECMI and 1e, I never considered the actual rules as gospel, nor did most of the players I played with. Every single person knew that (to use an example) 1e was kludgy in parts, and there were table rules at most tables that deviated from the published materials. Most people were aware that some tables might not have druids, or monks, or paladins, or assassins. And this feeling was reinforced with UA and OA - two supplements that, respectively, introduced fundamentally broken classes (Barbarian, Cavalier) or introduced cool classes that most campaigns weren't using (Kensai, Wu-Jen). So the written materials were a base, but it was generally acknowledged that many parts of it were optional. I can't imagine trying to say, for example, that the DM "had" to include cavaliers just because they were in UA.

Ditto. That's been my experience too. Some of my group have been playing since the 70's, and in those days you couldn't treat the rules as gospel because the 'rules' were so poorly written! You had to pick and choose out of necessity. Gary Gygax used to always say, "If you don't like it, change it! If it doesn't exist, make it up!"

I come to every new game, even today, expecting things to be different depending on the DM. The first question I ask is, "What's allowed and not allowed?" I don't expect any game to be by the book.

 

[3SpdDragster]

And there is no game without Players. The DM gets thousands of characters so why kick up a fuss about the Players one character.

Seriously just get some perspective.

You are right, DM's get lots of characters but it is not just about the mechanics of the game. As amusing as a concept may be, sometimes it just doesn't fit the story.

 

[Corpsetaker]

I think this is a 3e created problem, as a side effect of WotC selling their system down the river in exchange for short term profit. The third edition era was incredibly prolific in terms of rules supplements, and each rules supplement - no matter how DM centered the content would appear to be - usually had in it a considerable amount of player centered character building options. The reasoning is obvious. There are a lot more players than DMs.

Back in the 1e era, the player could get away with buying only a PH and maybe an UA (and not even that if they were content to play non-spellcasters). The rest of the books were DM tools. Any supplemental material - say from Dragon - would need to be explicitly approved. In the 2e edition era, the focus on the DM as the target of publications largely continued. While there were some relatively minor nods to generic customization in the form of kit classes, most offered very little in the way of specific mechanical benefit, and were easy to brush over. The majority of highly specific customization was specific to a setting, and so went with the setting with no expectation that it necessarily ported to any other one. But in the 3e era, the goal appeared to be to sell as many books as possible to players by making the game rules much more player centric. That makes economic sense in the short run, but eventually crippled the game with rules bloat, poorly thought out rules, dysfunctional rules interactions, impossible to balance CharGen, at least three versions of every archetype. In the midst of this you had players with the quite understandable perception that since they'd bought the book, that they should be able to make use of it. Keeping track of this insanity involved very high levels of implicit social contracts regarding exactly to what extent and how you were allowed to break the game.

So now you have a lot of players out there with the experience that if it has been published, it's fair game and further that it's somewhat baffling why that wouldn't be true.

Going to have to disagree with this.

The amount of product has never had anything to do with this. Anything outside of the core three has always deemed as optional. What changed this was 4th edition because they made it clear that everything they came out with during 4th edition was considered core.

 

[Shasarak]

You are right, DM's get lots of characters but it is not just about the mechanics of the game. As amusing as a concept may be, sometimes it just doesn't fit the story.

Yeah....are you talking about an Adventure Path type of Story or are you talking about a frustrated Fantasy writer type of Story?

 

[TwoSix]

How does it matter to Dark Sun one way or another if there are Gnomes or not? Does having a lost tribe of Gnomes suddenly turn Dark Sun into a verdant Green paradise? Most likely not.

Because campaign settings are defined just as much by their limitations as they are by what's included. Let's face it, if I go into a game where you've created 10 different homebrew races, I'm probably just going to shrug them off and pick human. But if I find out in your game that only elves can be clerics and only dwarves can be wizards, now you have my attention.

 

[Nagol]

So, just for the sake of discussion, for folks who would not allow certain races in their campaign....let's just say that you had to allow it. You're running Dark Sun, and there are no gnomes in Dark Sun because they were literally wiped out centuries before by one of the Dragon-Kings. It's a built in fact of the setting.

A player comes to you and says I want to play a gnome. How do you handle it if you can't simply say no? What would you do?

Why couldn't I say no?

If I'm dealing with a violent sociopath, a gnome would appear through a fleeting wormhole. Heck, he'd pretty much get whatever he wanted until I was in position to turn him in/incapacitate him.
If I owe the player too much to refuse then I'd roll my eyes and a gnome would appear as above.

Pretty much any other situation would get, "Sorry, how about a <insert appropriate race> instead?"