D&D 5E Supplemental books: Why the compulsion to buy and use, but complain about it?

[Hussar]

Me, I look at it like this.

Say I say, at chargen time, no evil PC's. Pretty standard limitation at lots of tables. Now, say a player comes to me wanting to play an evil priest of Vecna (to use [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION]'s example). My response would be to talk to the player and learn why he wants to play this particular character. What is it about "Evil Priest of Vecna" that is floating this player's boat? Is it a case of wanting to delve into forbidden knowledge and learn secrets? Well, then perhaps we could go with Priest of Boccob instead - after all, both Boccob and Vecna share a penchant for mystical lore. Or perhaps a Bard (or Bard variant) that also deals with knowledge and focuses less on music.

Or, perhaps, if the player pitches the concept well enough, I'll let him play it provisionally with the caveat that if it becomes a problem at the table, we'll be revisiting this conversation. Put the responsibility for keeping the character functioning within the group on the the player's shoulders and trust that the player will do a good job of it.

Or, perhaps the player is just a dick and needs to be shown the door. That's possible too.

But, given the choice between a fully engaged player who is excited about the character he or she wants to play, and maintaining my campaign world, I'll go with the player's ideas every single time. A fully engaged player is far, far better than any campaign setting rules.

 

[KarinsDad]

That would be a problem player, of course.

But, the issue here has been some people calling any player who ever tries to push things a whiney, self-entitled, problem player. Anyone who questions the all mighty DM is obviously a problem player right?

That was not the case though in this thread though.

The whiney, self-entitled, problem player was the one who after the DM had the discussion and thought about it and said no, wouldn't let it drop.

The normal reasonable player was the one who after the DM had the discussion and thought about it and said no, said ok and moved on.


The DM can agree with the player, compromise with the player, or disagree with the player and the DM is still being reasonable in all three of these cases.

It's not reasonable to think that the DM must cave in to every player demand or idea.

 

[Greg K]

That would be a problem player, of course.

But, the issue here has been some people calling any player who ever tries to push things a whiney, self-entitled, problem player. Anyone who questions the all mighty DM is obviously a problem player right?

If they respectfully question and accept the answer, no, it is not a pushy, whiny player. However, I do consider it an entitled and whiny problem player if he or she pushes rather than accept that the person running has different tastes and, politely, bows out if it is not for them. Even if the person running, says that they think the element is crap and, therefore, they are not making room for it, that should be good enough. If the player disagrees, than their tastes are incompatible, but nothing entitles the player to have the DM cater to his or her tastes.

 

[prosfilaes]

So? What entitles you to have your particular wants met in a game run by someone else?

Gaming is about multilateral consent. If my wants aren't met, why should I play?

If you don't like their restriction(s), find another table or start another group of your own.

Or I tell the owner of the table and the other people in my group that maybe we should play someone else's game on these nights. I've got a bunch of ideas, but if someone else wants to run things I'd be happy to do that. If we have to go head to head like this, I think the DM should be careful to make sure that it's actually their table and their group first. My way or the highway doesn't really go well if it's not your house or the players have no interest in playing without the person the DM is kicking out.

Edit: Or, from another direction, my wants aren't met, but I'm not going to abandon my friends in my Tuesday night game. So I continue to come, but a little more grumpy and paying a little less attention. And it turns out that while I don't have the social weight to force your hand, you don't have the social weight to kick me out without possibly losing the entire group. And so it goes, everyone a little less happy because we focused on who was entitled to what instead of all working together.

 

[Elf Witch]

There are dozens of draconic humanoids in D&D. Taking the one that was explicitly designed for PC use (which it was, unless you can show me the book before Races of Dragon that has Dragonborn in it) and turning them into monsters is frustrating. Maybe it's not frustrating to everyone, but it is to me.





I don't know how to read that as anything but "players who vote with their feet when a given campaign is not too overbearing are bad people."



? That's exactly what I was replying to and making fun of.

Funny how "people who want to play things I don't like" automatically equates today whiny, self entitled players who are obviously the entire problem at the table.

As if anyone who dares question the obvious superiority of the all knowing DM is self evidently revealing him or herself as a problem player.

Yeah. No thanks.

I'm coming in late here but I am confused... [MENTION=6777224]Hard[/MENTION]coreD&Dgirl keeps bringing up dragonborn and [MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] keeps talking about evil/monstrous PCs... I only know the 3.5 and 4e version (was there a 1e or 2e version) and both were like paliden up right heroic good guys... what am I missing (warning sorry if I missed answer I just tried to read 8 pages of this thread well watching cut throat kitchen)

Certainly the DM is one of those people. My point was that everyone at the table needs to have a good time and be willing to compromise to that end. Of course the DM bears the largest burden (and players should respect his or her rulings) but it doesn't excuse the DM from being flexible for the sake of the game.

A lot of my games have been with D&D groups, where it would be hard to walk out from a particular game without walking out from a group. In one of those groups, I recall an instance where the majority of the players were filling seats until the current DM got done with his campaign and a fun DM started running again. So, socially, it's very hard to for players to walk from these groups. On the other hand, I haven't run into many groups that had only one person who was willing to GM, which may impact my willingness to accept ultimatums.

I am skeptical of any game run by a DM who doesn't want to run the game unless it's exactly the list of restrictions given before the start of the game. If your world has to be just so, what are you going to do if we blow the hell out of it or walk off the edge? And who really wants to run a game for a player who doesn't really want to play that game? If one race out of many in the world matters that much to the DM, why can't the one race that the player is playing matter to a player?

On Google Plus, Kenneth Hite talks about the four campaigns he offered his current group, the three new ones in three different eras (with the starting year for one depending on the PCs) under three different systems. When a GM who gets his amazingly creative work published can do that, I don't feel really sympathetic to a DM running in a stock D&D world who narrowly restricts what characters can be played.

That would be a problem player, of course.

But, the issue here has been some people calling any player who ever tries to push things a whiney, self-entitled, problem player. Anyone who questions the all mighty DM is obviously a problem player right?

Me, I look at it like this.

Say I say, at chargen time, no evil PC's. Pretty standard limitation at lots of tables. Now, say a player comes to me wanting to play an evil priest of Vecna (to use [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION]'s example). My response would be to talk to the player and learn why he wants to play this particular character. What is it about "Evil Priest of Vecna" that is floating this player's boat? Is it a case of wanting to delve into forbidden knowledge and learn secrets? Well, then perhaps we could go with Priest of Boccob instead - after all, both Boccob and Vecna share a penchant for mystical lore. Or perhaps a Bard (or Bard variant) that also deals with knowledge and focuses less on music.

Or, perhaps, if the player pitches the concept well enough, I'll let him play it provisionally with the caveat that if it becomes a problem at the table, we'll be revisiting this conversation. Put the responsibility for keeping the character functioning within the group on the the player's shoulders and trust that the player will do a good job of it.

Or, perhaps the player is just a dick and needs to be shown the door. That's possible too.

But, given the choice between a fully engaged player who is excited about the character he or she wants to play, and maintaining my campaign world, I'll go with the player's ideas every single time. A fully engaged player is far, far better than any campaign setting rules.

Gaming is about multilateral consent. If my wants aren't met, why should I play?



Or I tell the owner of the table and the other people in my group that maybe we should play someone else's game on these nights. I've got a bunch of ideas, but if someone else wants to run things I'd be happy to do that. If we have to go head to head like this, I think the DM should be careful to make sure that it's actually their table and their group first. My way or the highway doesn't really go well if it's not your house or the players have no interest in playing without the person the DM is kicking out.

prosfilaes In my campaign which is a 3.5 we have dragonborn but not what came out in 4E but from Races of the Dragon so they are very different than 4E because they start out as a different race and go through a ritual to become dragonborn. As I said before dwarves are evil they are born that way now because every dwarf gives their unborn babies soul in payment to devils and demon lords. Now since the start of DnD dwarves have been a player class but I have run six people through this world and every last one of then said cool how original about dwarves. It is nice to see things shaken up and changed now and then.

You are reaching no one is saying players who vote with their feet are bad people. I have voted with my feet and I don't think I was a bad person for doing so. Once I did it because I wa not enjoying the game. The DM was heavily into hack and slash and that is not my playstyle. I didn't think he was bad DM and I didn't go around telling people so. I was upfront and honest and said it was a difference in playstyles. Another time I walked because the DM was an unreasonable controlling jerk. He lets his wife have all the spotlight and of course she never came close to dying. He got mad at me because my PC got killed he thought I did it on purpose but no I didn't. I had no clue that he would choose to have his town guard use lethal force to kill my PC when she tried to bluff and feint to escape. He choose to have them all be armed with swords and to have six attacks on me all using lethal force instead of subdual damage. As the DM he controlled the NPCs and he made the decision to what they did. Then he veto every character I tried to make. He wanted to me play a carbon copy of my dead player and I didn't want to. The party had a bard, sorcerer, wizard and druid I had been playing a warlock so I thought a fighter was what we needed. Which was not an unreasonable request.

So see I know what it is like to play with an unreasonable unfair DM.

Why do people take things to the extreme there is a difference between trying to build a gaming world that is not the same as every other freaking world out there and being over protective off the world. I kind of resent the implication that as a DM when I make decisions to make my world have some interesting differences that means I don't want the players to come in and change things or blow my world up. That is not true not allowing dwarves or warlocks is hardly the same as treating the PCs like they are pawns with no say.

I talk to my players before a game starts I am open about what I want to do and you know what if they said no not interested I would pitch another idea because I have many. If a player comes into my game where I want heroes and wants to play evil I ask why. If it because they want to play a redemption story like say Xena then I will usually allow it with the understanding that if they stay evil and become a problem at the table then the PC becomes an NPC and they get to make a new character.

Your comment of I will talk to the other players and take them with me almost sounds like blackmail the my way or the highway that you say you dislike so much. And if the players walk then that frees the DM to find a group of players who are more suited to his DMing and the players who walked can find a DM more suited to them. I would not want to play with a group of players who would force me to deal with an unreasonable player who was ruining my fun at the table to the point that I would want them to leave.

Hussar I have never met a player who throws tantrums who became fully engaged with the world to make it worthwhile dealing with the tantrums. That is the difference. A player who comes to you with an idea and says I know you don't normally allow this but what if we did this with the character and they had good ideas and showed a willingness to work with me to adapt their idea then I am usually willing to work with them. I want my players to have fun But that is not the same as digging their heels in and saying I have to play a dwarf this time if I don't I won't have any fun in the game and how dare you say no to a core class. That is being unreasonable that is being what I consider a whiny entitled player. Come on are you telling me that you can only have fun in a game if you can only play one race or class when there are so many others being offered.

I have had DMs say human only I understand some payers don't like that but then they don't need to play in that DMs campaign. I think it is perfectly reasonable for a DM to ban classes and races from settings they don't feel fits in their setting. I don't allow Eberron races when I run a Kingdom of Kalamar game. I don't think they fit well. I have a Xena/Hercules style campaign and the only races available as player characters are human, dragonteeth, satyrs, dryads and merfolk. If you think that is to limiting then maybe this campaign is not for you and there is nothing wrong with feeling that way. I would not be insulted if a player was upfront with me and said that. But what would bother me is them knowing this ahead of time agreeing to my play in my campaign then pressuring me to allow them to play an elf.

No one here is advocating for unreasonable rules and draconian DMs. Every one of us has said yes you talk and listen to your players that you are upfront at the very beginning on what you want to do in this game and what we don't want. That if you can you try and work with the players. But we also ask that the players work with is and be upfront with is as well. Tell me upfront that you don't like my restrictions don't tell me this sounds good and then try and make a character that you know I have banned. Communication is a two way street and players need to communicate and be upfront the same as DMs.



This whole idea that a DM has to allow everything is why people don't like splatbooks and don't want them published because they don't want to deal with players who can't take no.

 

[pemerton]

My objection to splatbook overload is that with each new rule in a new supplement, you run the risk of eliminating options for others. Even if you don't even use that splatbook. Here's what I mean:

Let's say a new rule in a new supplement says if you take this feat you can move through the space of a foe the same size as you by making a Dex or Str check (athletics or acrobatics, if you have it) check versus a fixed DC.

Up until that new feat, DMs were just allowing players to make an Dex or Str (athletics or acrobatics) check versus some DC to try and do just that. But now it's a feat. So now many DMs will assume the rules were never intended to allow it with an ability check without the feat. So all of a sudden, an option all characters had that they could try, has gone away because of a new feat - even if none of them took the feat.

I agree that this is a problem.

I don't know how 3E dealt with it, because I don't know the plethora of 3E/PF feats, class abilities etc well enough.

In 4e, I think skill powers are (overall) a good way of handling this: they take skills as pre-requisites, but (speaking in general terms) open up options that don't plausibly fit within the remit of skill improvisation. One way they achieve this isn't just in terms of what they permit, but the fact that typically they don't require a skill check to achieve it. For instance, Insightful Riposte, which lets you add +3 to a missed attack, has Insight as a pre-req but doesn't require a check. So even if a GM was, prior to the ability, inclined to allow a player to make an Insight check to get combat advantage (+2) on an attack, the ability still gives something above and beyond - an auto-bonus of +3.

Conversely, I don't use 4e's martial practices in my game in part because I think they do tend towards the "crowding out" issue that you are worried about.

I'm not sure if the skill power approach can easily be implemented in 5e, though, because by 5e standards skill powers are probably a bit mechanically fiddly.

 

[pemerton]

I just want to focus real quick on the whole concept of compromise. You can't just solve an argument by declaring compromise. If I don't get what I want but you do then that is not compromise.

It might be if, next time, you get what you want and I don't get what I want.

Or it might be if you get a little bit but not all of what you want.

What entitles you to have your particular wants met in a game run by someone else? If you don't like their restriction(s), find another table or start another group of your own.

This takes as a premise a single answer to what is being discussed, namely, who runs the game? For those who don't regard the GM as "running" the game in any sense beyond refereeing duties, then your rhetorical question has no force.

That's not intended as an objection to your preferred conception of how an RPG table works. Just pointing out that others, who have a different conception, may not be moved by you reiterating your conception.

It doesn't matter if Dragonborn are not monsters in your game. They are monsters in my game.

I like running heroic fantasy, not entitled to do whatever I want evil/monstrous PC fantasy.

Gnomes, originally, were "monsters" but not a PC race. Every expansion in PC race and class options has depended upon someone - typically a D&D designer, perhaps a contributor to Dragon - permitting a PC to be built using a novel race or class, or one which hitherto had found expression in the game only among NPCs/monsters.

I think this means that there can be no general objection to players playing PCs which, hitherto, would have figured only as NPCs. Any objection would have to be particular, on the merits of the particular case.

Also, how do you stop players from being entitled to do whatever they want with their PCs? Veto their action declarations?

I am skeptical of any game run by a DM who doesn't want to run the game unless it's exactly the list of restrictions given before the start of the game. If your world has to be just so, what are you going to do if we blow the hell out of it or walk off the edge?

This remark resonates very strongly with me, and not just for abstract reasons. I have had bad experiences with GMs who want to exercise this degree of control over the content of the play experience.

 

[Grainger]

Guess what, that would fall under what I said about unusual backgrounds. However, for much of our history it was not that uncommon unless you have a large cosmopolitan area, invasion or migration. Cultures have traditions for naming and dress. For a long time, most people never traveled more than 10 miles from their home. And if you are or a different race or ethnicity living among other people, then you will have a background that reflects some changes from the standard of your race or ethnicity in most cases factoring in things like assimilation by the dominant culture, whether groups are isolationist staying in their own enclaves, etc, etc..

Yes, there are cultures that do not use scimitars (in fact there is only one that does which means druids do not get it as a class weapon). There is even one that is remote and does not use bows let alone crossbows, but atlatls and throwing sticks (and guess what there is at least one culture in our own world that never adopted the bow despite having knowledge of it).The list of universal cross-cultural weapons is not very large, clubs, hand axe, knife, and spear with the bow being nearly universal.

This all reminds me of the Mystaran Hollow World sub-setting, where not only were there many cultures with strict weapon/armour/equipment provisions (e.g. "no metal armour for anyone"), but magic barely worked in the whole sub-setting, so mages and clerics coming from the "normal" setting were severely nobbled. I integrated it into my home-brew world, and we had some excellent games there!

Severely restricting character powers was the very basis of the setting, and I think it's one of the best things TSR ever released.

I'm now running a 5e campaign set in early feudal times, and nope, there is no armour better than chain, and you definitely can't have scimitars or rapiers. Drow and Tieflings do not exist in the entire universe, and neither do half the Monster Manual (there is no "Underdark" and no "Demons" or the like). Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears etc. are not any more evil than Humans or Elves. In the principal country, Elves are an oppressive overclass, lording it over Humans, Dwarves and Halflings (although there are many Elves who are not jerks). I'm not sure yet whether I will allow a choice of more than one or two religions. 90% of the population have never travelled more than a few miles from their home village, so there's little cultural diversity (but far more so than in real life, because we have all those fantasy races living there). It's called flavour, and players don't get to be The Special One in order to circumvent it.

 

[Elf Witch]

If your group plays with the DM is only there to make rulings then done of this is relevant to your group. But if the group plays with the DM having the responsibility to make the world and and run the NPCs as well adjudicate the rules then it is a different matter. And who has the final say will be different in how you view games.

That boggles my mind the idea that just because a class or race is included in a book then the DM has to allow it. That attitude is what leads to people saying oh god why did they put dragonborn in the players handbook and other saying if you don't like them in your world then just don't use them.

There is a split personality here the whole concept behind fifth edition is the ability to tailor the game yet some people seem to think it is wrong to actually tailor a game.

I am skeptical of players who can't find a PC to play out of 400 choices and just have to play what the DM has banned otherwise their fun is compromised. Because they don't sound very creative to me and it makes me wonder if they are going to trust anything I do any ruling I make in my game.

I don't understand why a DM tailoring the game to fit the setting they are running equals being controlling and taking all the players freedom away.

 

[Sadras]

No one here is advocating for unreasonable rules and draconian DMs. Every one of us has said yes you talk and listen to your players that you are upfront at the very beginning on what you want to do in this game and what we don't want. That if you can you try and work with the players. But we also ask that the players work with is and be upfront with is as well. Tell me upfront that you don't like my restrictions don't tell me this sounds good and then try and make a character that you know I have banned. Communication is a two way street and players need to communicate and be upfront the same as DMs.

This whole idea that a DM has to allow everything is why people don't like splatbooks and don't want them published because they don't want to deal with players who can't take no.

and

There is a split personality here the whole concept behind fifth edition is the ability to tailor the game yet some people seem to think it is wrong to actually tailor a game.

I am skeptical of players who can't find a PC to play out of 400 choices and just have to play what the DM has banned otherwise their fun is compromised. Because they don't sound very creative to me and it makes me wonder if they are going to trust anything I do any ruling I make in my game.

I don't understand why a DM tailoring the game to fit the setting they are running equals being controlling and taking all the players freedom away.

Perfect.
And that DM's playstyle you described with the wife and all....absolute shocker!