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

[Grainger]

As Pemerton mentioned above, for me it becomes a "say yes or roll the dice" situation. I almost never have anything pre-determined like that. I want to be surprised as a DM and allowing either the players or the dice to drive the campaign allows for that. Since there is no contradiction from the player's point of view, I don't really see a problem. I'll rewrite entire swaths of my plans based on that one addition if I need to.

But, I think as a DM, it helps to build a lot more flexibility into the campaign. Is it absolutely necessary that that specific ruler is opposed to the players? Why? Why not simply shift "A noble opposes your efforts" a couple of steps to the left and instead of Baron Von Turkeywaddle being opposed, now Marquis De Gravy is. From the player's perspective, nothing has changed. They don't know an of that and you get to keep 99% of the prep that you've done. Or, maybe that becomes a "Yes,and" situation. Sure, that ruler will help you, but the important people in his court oppose the PC's, so, now the PC's have to convince the court for help.

Note, this is something of an odd example too, since the players have never actually had any dealings with this NPC, it would be very odd for a player to declare what the intentions of that NPC should be. By and large, you don't make declarations in a vacuum, you should have something connecting the dots. Particularly when trying to declare future events. Adding a magic item into a setting based on the back story of an existing item isn't too much of a stretch, IMO, but, declaring the reactions of an unknown NPC is something I've never seen players do. They want to be surprised too.

I really, really shy away from having pre-determined results in PC/NPC interactions. Unless the interactions either have no real consequences (who really cares what the bartender says to you?) or the results are very obvious (or bloody well should be) to everyone at the table (yes, walking out of a ball held in your honour by the king (or in this case queen) is going to have negative repercussions on your interactions with the queen down the line) I'm perfectly willing to let the PC's and the dice drive the car.

That's a very different style from me. I pre-plan ahead like crazy - not outcomes of PC actions, but the world in which they live. Anyway, I'll give your style of play some thought.

 

[Grainger]

I don't think there really is such a thing as a great GM in a vacuum. There are only great game/group fits. This goes for players as well.

This is my experience, too. When a group gels, it's great. Playing styles can clash (for example, a narrative-style player can get very frustrated in a group where the DM indulges a player who likes to plan in excruciating detail). It's the GM's job to accommodate the styles, but I do think some gaming groups and GM combinations just mesh better than others.

 

[pemerton]

I only game with good GMs. None of our groups are going to break up if we can't agree. We all agree to go along for the ride, if a good GM is willing to run it.

nobody ranks their character concept above what the DM has in mind in terms of the setting, going in. Nobody would consider leaving, as it's a very good DM and so they know no matter what character they end up playing it's going to be a lot of fun.

I'm sure this works for you and your group. But that doesn't mean it generalises to other groups. (And likewise for what works for those other groups - there's no reason to think it generalises either.)

What works for one group may not necessarily work for any other. The best way to play a particular game is highly dependent on particular mix of players, what the GM's strengths and weaknesses are, as well as the vagaries of the game being played.

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I don't think there really is such a thing as a great GM in a vacuum. There are only great game/group fits. This goes for players as well. I think the most fruitful approach is to simply know your players, know yourself, and try to determine the best way to do things for a particular situation and not be afraid to make adjustments over time. I think when you focus on who has a right to do a thing you're starting out on bad footing. It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong. What matters is what approach will lead to the best gaming for your particular group.

I agree with this.

we're all friends, there to hang out. The idea someone would leave over not being able to play some concept they had in mind is just foreign to me.

I play with my friends too, and the social aspect is very important. For me, the idea of unilaterally dictating what sorts of character concepts or stories the shared game will involve seems very foreign. We talk about it together. In play, I expect them to make contributions (I've posted some examples upthread). There is not really a "ride" for them to go along for.

I pitch a given campaign to my players first. They then create character concepts appropriate to said campaign and we discuss how it'll all work. They don't come to the table with preconceptions as to what they are going to play before that point because it would be a colossal waste of time. They trust me to run fun, interesting games. I trust them not to create campaign-inappropriate characters.

I tend to pitch a system and genre. Assuming the players think it's worth playing in - and obviously that is up for discussion on any given occasion - then PCs get built, with a greater or lesser degree of collaboration.

Detailed setting elements aren't something I will worry too much about until the players have built their PCs.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm sure this works for you and your group. But that doesn't mean it generalises to other groups. (And likewise for what works for those other groups - there's no reason to think it generalises either.)

I believe this could be a reply to nearly 90% of your posts.

 

[Hussar]

There's been a common thread in this discussion that goes something like this: "Players have so many options available, it's rather petty to complain about losing one option while you still have so many". And, to be fair it's a reasonable idea. If you have 50 options, is it really a big deal that you don't have 51? Put like that it does seem rather petty for a player to complain about losing an option.

But, there's a double standard here. No matter how many options a player has, a DM has infinitely more. The DM can do anything, play anything, change anything, declare anything about the game world at any point in time. He can even blatantly contradict what came before, so long as he finds a way to resolve the contradiction - "A wizard/god/demon did it" usually works. If the DM needs a Wish spell cast, then, poof, it's cast. If the DM needs a particular thing to exist, or not exist, in the game world, there is pretty much nothing stopping him.

So, if it's petty for a player to complain about not having that 51st option, what does that say about a DM who can't accept adding something to his game?

Take the earlier example that was brought up of "No PC Tieflings". Ok, fair enough. Now, if the campaign is about the persecution of tieflings and it's a major element of the game, then it's pretty reasonable for the DM to tell the player no. After all, saying yes means that the DM now has a bucket load of work to do and that's not fair. But, presume for a moment that that's not the case. The "No PC Tieflings" rule is more one to maintain a particular flavour that the DM happens to like. Tieflings might feature here or there, but, they aren't the focus of the campaign.

In that case, changing, "Everyone hates tieflings and attacks them on sight" to "Everyone dislikes Tieflings and treats them as second class citizens and generally discriminates against them but doesn't kill them on sight" isn't exactly going to massively change the campaign. It's a fairly minor point in the campaign and you're still getting the same broad picture - creatures with strong ties to demons/devils aren't particularly well liked in this world. Now, that took me all of thirty seconds to change in the game world. It's a case of modifying a small detail that likely wasn't going to feature in the campaign anyway (after all, with no PC tieflings, how often is "We kill tielfings on sight" actually going to come up in the game?)

But, this is completely unreasonable for the player to expect?

See, this is where i get such a bad rap for being down on DM's. To me, any DM who is that dogmatic about their setting isn't going to stop at character generation. That same dogmatism is going to permeate the entire game. I don't see how it can't. If it's too much to expect that the DM will take thirty seconds to change his game world, when the rubber meets the road and the players start actually interacting with this setting, I have trouble believing that this same DM will blithely accept widespread changes to the setting as the PC's do their thing and start building their own kingdoms, founding religions, toppling governments, rewriting reality, generally all the things that higher level PC's do in any setting. I just don't see it happening.

 

[Piratecat]

I try to be really clear to my players about what's allowed, disallowed, and just discouraged. For instance, I don't love the flavor of dragonborn as written. I don't dislike them enough to disallow them, but were I starting a new campaign, I'd either rewrite the flavor (and inform players of this) or disallow them entirely.

But you know what? Unless there's something I hate so much that it would piss me off every time it showed up in game, my friends are more important than the campaign. If I had a friend who loved dragonborn SO MUCH that they couldn't play D&D without playing one, I'd have to give serious thought as to whether to relax my prejudice or to ask them to sit this game out. I wouldn't want it to become a passive-aggressive battle for control, where they are resentful every time they showed up, and I was resentful every time they were grumpy.

My game, my rules -- but you can bet I'll bend as far as possible to make both my players and myself happy.

 

[billd91]

So, if it's petty for a player to complain about not having that 51st option, what does that say about a DM who can't accept adding something to his game?

There is a significant difference. The GM must be willing to deal with every option the PCs incorporate at the table. And usually on an ongoing basis. If tieflings annoy the bejeezus out of him, a player bringing a tiefling to the table means the GM has to put up with that annoyance every game. Or psionics. Or incarnum magic. Or wire-fu. Or maybe the tiefling PC's presence requires the GM to abandon what he wanted to be a central theme of the campaign setting. Maybe it even makes the campaign, as envisioned and pitched, pointless. After all, having a secret conspiracy of dwarven wizards (something everyone believes the Gods have decreed impossible) making magic items deep under the Lortmil Mountains and discoverable by PCs kinds of loses its impact if one player insists on playing a dwarven wizard.

 

[Piratecat]

To me, any DM who is that dogmatic about their setting isn't going to stop at character generation. That same dogmatism is going to permeate the entire game. I don't see how it can't. If it's too much to expect that the DM will take thirty seconds to change his game world, when the rubber meets the road and the players start actually interacting with this setting, I have trouble believing that this same DM will blithely accept widespread changes to the setting as the PC's do their thing and start building their own kingdoms, founding religions, toppling governments, rewriting reality, generally all the things that higher level PC's do in any setting. I just don't see it happening.

I see a huge difference between the DM having a vision that he'd like the players to adhere to, and the DM being generally dismissive of player agency. I love it when the players change the world. For me, that's the whole point of our D&D campaigns. That's an entirely separate issue for me than setting guidelines for character generation.

For instance, I'm running two campaigns right now set in the same campaign world, a huge and incredibly civilized empire. One group is a bunch of ex-criminals forced to join the Grey Guard (similar to Game of Thrones' Night Watch; they're an organization of monster hunters made up of petty criminals and miscreants who join for life in exchange for their crimes being pardoned), and the other group are the children of the most prosperous merchant family in the empire. In the first group, if someone had wanted to bring in a PC who wasn't in the Grey Guard, I'd have said no. In the second group, if someone had wanted to bring in a primitive and fur-clad half-orc barbarian from the far north, I'd have said no. Dogmatic? I dunno. But the PCs' actions in both groups have fundamentally changed the campaign world in hundreds of different ways. Adhering to a campaign vision is really quite different than being a control freak who insists on keeping the PCs under his thumb (my words, not yours.)

 

[Greg K]

I have trouble believing that this same DM will blithely accept widespread changes to the setting as the PC's do their thing and start building their own kingdoms, founding religions, toppling governments, rewriting reality, generally all the things that higher level PC's do in any setting. I just don't see it happening.

Then that is on you. I have had a player whose goal was to lead a rebellion against a usurper and place the rightful king back on the throne (he read in the blurb about that country that there was a usurper and the true king's family was in hiding and pictured a Robin Hood led rebellion. His reason for adventuring was to seek powerful allies and items to help topple the usurper). I have had a group of players unintentionally start a war between dwarven refugees and the theocracy that took them in. Founding a new religion granting divine powers? Probably will not happen. Building their own kingdom? Maybe, if they can over throw one of the evil kingdoms and start there, but my campaigns don't go above levels 10-12. Finding out they are heir to a kingdom is perhaps more likely. Becoming head of a guild, temple, clan, tribe etc.? Definitely possible and has happened.

 

[Greg K]

I see a huge difference between the DM having a vision that he'd like the players to adhere to, and the DM being generally dismissive of player agency. I love it when the players change the world. For me, that's the whole point of our D&D campaigns. That's an entirely separate issue for me than setting guidelines for character generation.

Exactly. I am simply creating a setting that I want to run and setting everyone on the same page ahead of time. I don't have a pre-planned story, but an initial guideline of where it might go based on initial backgrounds and goals of the characters (which need to be grounded in the setting). Once play starts, those initial plans tend to go out the window. I am constantly reacting to the players and improvising. Sometimes the planned session gets thrown out the window as the group decides to change course and go somewhere unexpected or has a new goal for the evening (e.g., I have mentioned in the past about the party trying to get the tightly wound virgin druid "laid" or the knight whom decided to return home and the party finding they had to help clear him of treason and regain his home, because of the background the player gave me at the start of the campaign). I live for moments like these as well as moments when they unintentionally started a civil war. That I place campaign/setting restrictions on character generation has nothing to do with not wanting player agency.