D&D 5E Access to Races in a Campaign

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I have seen plenty of people turn up to a D&D game, failed to have read a single rule, and yet by the end of one session be able to play the game and contribute to everyone's enjoyment. DMing takes more practice than this so therefore it does take more effort than playing.

A person could show up just like this player you describe and by the end of that session (spent as a player) be ready to take their turn DMing next session.

Unless a DM can turn up, have read nothing before having turned up and then by the end of the first session be able to run an enjoyable game it does, in fact, take more effort.

Nope, because you are forgetting to account for that there is someone teaching that player - if you give the same benefit to the DM, you reach the same effort.

Again I reject this claim. I enjoy (as a player) games where some options have been banned and the rest have been made integral parts of the setting.

That something doesn't apply to you doesn't make it untrue for everyone.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

In my current game there are 4 players. Two of those have tried DMing in the past and aren't interested. The third isn't interested in DMing at all. The fourth is already DMing another campaign and hasn't got time for a second. Not always so simple...

Sure, not every player will enjoy being a DM - I never said they would. But those folks you say aren't interested are still capable, and that's all I said they were.

If you want a campaign with no depth whatsoever, perhaps; but I've never seen or heard of a DM running a sustainable game without putting more time into it than the players. I'm talking long-term campaigns here, not one-offs or gonzo games.

Campaign depth is not exclusively achieved through prep - I run campaigns that are at least as deep as any I have ever participated in with no more effort put into the game than my players, including that we start campaigns opportunistically (there are a few of us here, we have a few hours... let's make some characters and start playing) and have them last 6-9 months of weekly sessions, being allowed to wrap-up and end for no other reason than that we have some other game we'd like to play and don't have time for another session in our schedule.

Er...the DM is committing to run the game as long as people want to play in it, and has to show up if any session is to run. A player commits to one session at a time, usually, and if he no-shows the game can still go on.

If you don't ask your players to commit to actually attending, I can see how you would think that the DM has to commit more... but I find "I'll run it as long as you guys want to play it" and "we'll show up to play as long as you want to run it" to be equal.

Confidence with the rules is essential unless you've got a dream-like group of altruistic players who would never turn a disputed rule to their advantage.

I am saddened that you consider it "dream-like" to have a group of players that aren't trying to get one over on the DM. Do you not play with friends? Anyone trying to get some kind of advantage by abusing a new DM's lack of confidence rather than help them bolster that confidence (to the benefit of the whole group) is the kind of player I'd show the door and ask not to return.

A DM also needs confidence in her rulings (remember, 5e = rulings not rules) and the ability to make those runlings in such a way as to keep the game playable.

Yes, as I said, the rules don't really matter that much so you just need to either be confident in making a ruling and moving on, or having your group work together (rather than against you) to keep the game going.

What DM school did you go to, where they taught you how to do it so easy?

I picked up a book in a bookstore when I was 12 because it looked cool, I read it and found out it was a game that I needed a couple more parts of, so I returned to the bookstore the next day, bought those other parts needed (a couple more books and some dice), gave them a quick read, made up my first adventure and recruited my cousins and a couple friends to play it through.

All the rest of my DM "schooling" is from getting people together and just playing games - and I'm not some kind of prodigy, it is just that easy to learn to be a DM (and practice makes you a better DM), but some folks think otherwise because they came into gaming a different way and have likely had experience with DMs that play up how much "work" they do to run the game as a means to keep their players drinking the "his game, his way, I don't deserve a say in it" koolaid.

Do you not design your own world?

I used to design a fresh world for every new campaign I put together - whether I planned in advance, or just did it improv style as it came up during a session.

Do you never houserule, or tinker with the system?

Of course I house-rule when I see the need... but I involve my players in the process since the outcome affects them as much (usually more) than it does me.

Do you never write your own adventures, pantheons, story arc, or plot?

I've been playing D&D for half my life and have only ever run 4 campaigns from published materials - but that doesn't mean I have to prepare in advance of the session, or that me thinking up what obstacle stands in the way of a stated goal of the players takes any more effort than the players thinking up what they want their characters to be doing in the first place.

Do you track or log or record what the party does, and when, and what it finds?

Here's a point where I bet there is a lot of disconnect: I actually have my players split the "work" with me, rather than doing everything on my own like some DMs feel they must. One player keeps track of the party's inventory, another tracks their wealth, another draws maps as they explore, and another keeps track of the went here, did that, met them, and what day it is type of stuff.

All these things take time and effort, and there's a bit of skill involved in all but the last question.

Yes they take time and effort, and yes there is skill involved - but the DM taking all that time before a session instead of everyone taking a share during, and the DM making all that effort rather than the group all sharing it, and even that skill being skill at preparing in advance rather than skill running a fully improvised and reactive campaign are not the only possibilities.

Er...yes there is. You now need to determine where said Gnome comes from and whether that means there's other Gnomes out there; what their culture's like, etc. etc. Or you could leave it to the player, I suppose.

I can leave it to the player, and I do - it's his character, and I don't like Gnomes, both of which are good reasons for it to be done by him rather than me - but I can also acknowledge that where the gnome came from and whether there are other gnomes out there doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the campaign at all, and never bother filling in any more details than actually do have bearing on the campaign.

Or the same fun or even more fun, just with something different.

Maybe it is just me, but I don't think that being able to have fun without taking a particular option you find fun has anything to do with whether or not removing that option affects your fun.

I mean, I've got a player that I know really enjoyed the human fighter he played - it's one of his favorites, and so much fun in fact that he's asked to reprise the role of that character in an upcoming campaign (which I have obliged, of course - pretty much the whole group wants to play that set of characters again with 5th edition). But if I told him that he couldn't play dwarves anymore because I've got this plotline that requires them being absent or some setting that never had such a thing as a dwarf and had no dwarven visitors from other worlds, he'd skip out on playing without even hesitating, no matter how much he could still find that he would enjoy playing (he plays non-D&D games that don't have dwarves and enjoys them just fine) because I'm looking at the possibilities and am saying that X is more important to me than him getting to play what he wants to - which means I'm putting his enjoyment of the game at a lower priority by definition.

 

[JohnLynch]

A person could show up just like this player you describe and by the end of that session (spent as a player) be ready to take their turn DMing next session.

Nope, because you are forgetting to account for that there is someone teaching that player - if you give the same benefit to the DM, you reach the same effort.

I have never seen someone be coached through DMing in one game (let alone their first game) and then suddenly be a DM capable of running an enjoyable game with no prep work between the two games. If your area does have such DMs then I am jealous.

That something doesn't apply to you doesn't make it untrue for everyone.

You didn't say "Some people will have their enjoyment reduced by a reduction in races" you stated it with no qualifiers. You are correct in saying that just because SOME people don't have their fun reduced by reduced options doesn't mean that everyone won't have their fun reduced. I'd be interested in some statistical evidence to see how many people would have their fun reduced, but I know of no such evidence.

 

[Lanefan]

Sorry Lanefan I disagree. How you want to play your character doesn't give you the right to be a dick.

I'm not (usually) a dick, but I reserve the right to play a character who is. There's a big difference.

Playing a character that disrupts the game and tears down the efforts the rest of the table are making to create a story is never alright in m book.

Sometimes those in-party conflicts are - or become - the story, or a significant part of it.

I don't know whether or not you do this, but it sounds like what you are arguing for.

I'm arguing for individuality over conformism.

Question: how would you and-or your crew handle it if someone brought in an otherwise perfectly decent character who happened to have wisdom 5 and was properly played to it - frequently making the wrong move at the wrong time, never thinking through any consequences whatsoever, often acting on complete whim and fancy including wandering off now and then, and so on - would this even be allowed to exist in your game?

Lan-"expected speed of play/length of campaign is a factor too; it's no big deal to me if a session gets lost to party infighting as I know there'll be hundreds more sessions to follow"-efan

 

[JohnLynch]

Why on earth would the ancient Empire building proud warrior race guys get treated like monsters?

Because their proud warriors were filled with rapists and pillagers who enslaved the border races to allow civilian dragonborn to move onto the fertile land and setup their own farms and villages?

 

[Lanefan]

OK, I think I'm starting to see where we're coming at this a bit differently...

Sure, not every player will enjoy being a DM - I never said they would. But those folks you say aren't interested are still capable, and that's all I said they were.

Campaign depth is not exclusively achieved through prep - I run campaigns that are at least as deep as any I have ever participated in with no more effort put into the game than my players, including that we start campaigns opportunistically (there are a few of us here, we have a few hours... let's make some characters and start playing) and have them last 6-9 months of weekly sessions, being allowed to wrap-up and end for no other reason than that we have some other game we'd like to play and don't have time for another session in our schedule.

Here's one rather big difference: 6-9 months is barely scratching the surface. A good campaign is maturing at 6-9 years and still has legs for more. "Let's roll up some characters and drop the puck" is fine - it's excellent, in fact - but it's (almost certainly) shallow at least to begin with.

If you don't ask your players to commit to actually attending, I can see how you would think that the DM has to commit more... but I find "I'll run it as long as you guys want to play it" and "we'll show up to play as long as you want to run it" to be equal.

Fair point.

I am saddened that you consider it "dream-like" to have a group of players that aren't trying to get one over on the DM. Do you not play with friends?

I do play with friends, some of whom I know would love to put one over...not so much on the DM, but on the game. New DMs tend to get cut some slack, of course...for a while.

Anyone trying to get some kind of advantage by abusing a new DM's lack of confidence rather than help them bolster that confidence (to the benefit of the whole group) is the kind of player I'd show the door and ask not to return.

Perhaps we're a bit more adversarial in our overall approach - call it the 1e influence, perhaps

Yes, as I said, the rules don't really matter that much so you just need to either be confident in making a ruling and moving on, or having your group work together (rather than against you) to keep the game going.

And sometimes you need to be confident enough to win an argument. Let's face it, they happen.

I picked up a book in a bookstore when I was 12 because it looked cool, I read it and found out it was a game that I needed a couple more parts of, so I returned to the bookstore the next day, bought those other parts needed (a couple more books and some dice), gave them a quick read, made up my first adventure and recruited my cousins and a couple friends to play it through.

All the rest of my DM "schooling" is from getting people together and just playing games - and I'm not some kind of prodigy, it is just that easy to learn to be a DM

I'm not sure on this one...I've been DMing for over 30 years and I'm still learning the trade...

(and practice makes you a better DM)

...as evidenced by what you so rightly say here.

but some folks think otherwise because they came into gaming a different way and have likely had experience with DMs that play up how much "work" they do to run the game as a means to keep their players drinking the "his game, his way, I don't deserve a say in it" koolaid.

Depends on approach, I suppose. Me, I like to have the world mostly designed and rules mostly in place before puck drop; and have a decent idea of the world's history and much better idea of the regional history of where the party will start out - which I can then mine for story ideas later if needed.

I've been playing D&D for half my life and have only ever run 4 campaigns from published materials - but that doesn't mean I have to prepare in advance of the session, or that me thinking up what obstacle stands in the way of a stated goal of the players takes any more effort than the players thinking up what they want their characters to be doing in the first place.

You run full sandbox, then, with the players driving the story? In our lot the DM usually sets a story in motion to begin with, and the players then either run with it as intended or run off with it as very unintended.

Before I started my current campaign I storyboarded out what the first few dozen adventures might look like, with ideas for further beyond that if the game lasted long enough. It has, and 7.5 years later I'm now on version 10.2 of that storyboard. It bears very little resemblance to what I started with.

Here's a point where I bet there is a lot of disconnect: I actually have my players split the "work" with me, rather than doing everything on my own like some DMs feel they must. One player keeps track of the party's inventory, another tracks their wealth, another draws maps as they explore, and another keeps track of the went here, did that, met them, and what day it is type of stuff.

Don't you-as-DM also track their treasury - at least the items? We run a mirror list - the players keep a list showing what they know about an item, and I keep a mirror list which shows what the item really does. (there is no auto-knowledge of item properties here, and never will be). This mirror-list system is also really helpful when they get around to valuing and dividing their loot.

The players also do their own mapping...but I also have a map, either in a module or drawn out by me ahead of time, with lots more info. I've learned the hard way I'm incapable of designing dungeons on the fly without having one room eventually try to occupy the same space as another.

As for the logging, I do that as DM and post it online each week in point form. As player I've tried keeping such records in the past but I've found myself spending so much time writing I'm losing touch with what's happening; and I don't want to stop proceedings while I write it all down. That said, players are on their own hook for recording potentially useful story information; the online log merely shows what they did, not (in most cases) what they know.

Lan-"the challenge is then to get some players to actually read the bloody log between sessions"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Evil characters are a headache in an otherwise good party. You're just asking for derailment and arguments.

What makes you think it's a good party?

It's not about a missing role in the party, it's about spotlight time. If everyone is the same class it is harder for me to ensure those characters stand out and get spotlight time.

Meh...if your character has a personality that didn't come out of a cookie cutter you'll get some spotlight time just from role-play.

Run a party of just 5 mechanically-very-similar human fighters sometime, and a background NPC healer to keep them going. It'll give you a benchmark as to how good your players are at giving their characters some character.

I call it being a dick. We have zero tolerance for it. We have put up with troublesome players for far too long in the past. They say they want to make a troubled, nuanced character, but really they just want to bully everyone, derail the game, and have the spotlight on their special snowflake all the time.

It is a cooperative game.

I am not against playing a campaign where there is no party per se and the main game revolves around the drama of disparate PCs working or not working together to achieve their various aims.

That needs to be a central theme though and explicitly called out before character creation.

Or it needs to be allowed to develop as the game goes along, if that's where things want to go.

It can be a cooperative game. It doesn't always have to be.

And parties don't always have to be perfect. If and when I start another campaign I've an idea for how it will begin, if someone else in our crew doesn't use it first. Each player will roll up three characters, one each of 0th, 1st and 2nd level, in complete independence of what any other player is doing. Then, for each player two of those three will be randomly pulled from a hat (leaving the third as backup for when - not if - one dies) and those randomly-pulled characters will be the starting party.

Rationale: you're the random people a Necromancer just dug up out of a graveyard of failed adventurers (thus allowing for more variety of races etc. than a normal graveyard might hold) and somehow brought back to life. You owe him your lives and in repayment you're going to do some work for him, starting with this mission...

And then the chips can fall where they may.

Lan-"my only regret here is it'll probably be 5 years or more before I start another campaign as my current one still has so much left in it"-efan

 

[Li Shenron]

I have no idea how I can answer the OP question, because every campaign is different... I've run games in 'kitchen sink' fantasy settings where every race is allowed, games in 'vanilla' mode but sticking to classic (core) races only for the sake of simplicity, games in published fantasy settings (Greyhawk, FR, Rokugan...) where the list of available PC races is mostly fixed, games with player-driven worldbuilding (players free to choose, but then their choices of races and classes determine what is fairly common in the world), and games with a strong theme that seriously restricts characters option (possibly to just one race). And I have no idea which one of these could be said to be my own standard!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Here's one rather big difference: 6-9 months is barely scratching the surface. A good campaign is maturing at 6-9 years and still has legs for more.

That's a matter of preference. I prefer a campaign pace at which characters can go from starting level dealing with minor issues up to and through major events that have potential for lasting impact on the setting at large in about 6-9 months.

A concrete example: I ran a campaign that started with The Temple of Elemental Evil module, proceeded through Scourge of the Slavelords, and then Queen of Spiders concluding the campaign with the party confronting Lolth (so T1-4, A1-4, GDQ1-7), and all that happened in 60 sessions of 3-4 hours each - a handful of which felt a bit unexciting because the players were spinning their wheels deciding what to do, not actually doing things.

I hear of people playing the same campaign for numerous years - I just can't imagine what that is like, because it really can't be what it seems like it would from my current point of view.

"Let's roll up some characters and drop the puck" is fine - it's excellent, in fact - but it's (almost certainly) shallow at least to begin with.

It's not at all shallow, not even to begin with, if you don't want it to be shallow.

Perhaps we're a bit more adversarial in our overall approach - call it the 1e influence, perhaps

I'm not adversarial at all - never have been. Even when I was 12 and reading the DMG for the first time, I identified a few things as bad advice and chose to ignore them; those being the various ways in which the book encouraged adversarial practices (and fudging dice rolls, but that's a different topic entirely).

And sometimes you need to be confident enough to win an argument. Let's face it, they happen.

Winning the arguments that arise is nowhere near my priority - my priority when an argument arises is to get past it and back to playing the game with the argument having as little influence on the overall mood at the table as is possible. So yes, arguments do happen, but I don't care about winning them. In fact, I usually settle them by having the whole group vote what they think should be done and going with whatever is most acceptable to everyone present, my own opinion on the matter being no more weighty than any of the players'.

I'm not sure on this one...I've been DMing for over 30 years and I'm still learning the trade...

I don't know what you are unsure about. That you (and I, to be honest) are decades into DMing and still have room to improve doesn't have anything to do with the fact that a 12-year-old can learn to DM without being some kind of DMing prodigy.

Depends on approach, I suppose. Me, I like to have the world mostly designed and rules mostly in place before puck drop; and have a decent idea of the world's history and much better idea of the regional history of where the party will start out - which I can then mine for story ideas later if needed.

Yeah, it's just a difference of approach. You do all that stuff in advance and it's done whether you actually need it or not in the course of play, and I do that stuff the instance that it is actually needed at not a moment sooner (and someone jots it down for consistency in case it needs referenced later).

You run full sandbox, then, with the players driving the story?

Yes, full sandbox and players driving - at most I toss a few ideas into the mix by way of rumors or events the characters hear about or witness. Even when I do pre-plan for a campaign it is a bare-bones outline that only consists of events outside the party's control because I don't feel like wasting any of my own effort by spending time on something that ends up not actually coming up.

Don't you-as-DM also track their treasury - at least the items?

Why would I? I can see their list whenever I want to - making a copy of it to track myself would just waste time and paper.

the players keep a list showing what they know about an item, and I keep a mirror list which shows what the item really does. (there is no auto-knowledge of item properties here, and never will be).

Ah... I see. At my table if the characters aren't identifying an item as soon as they find it, they write it down as something along the lines of "unidentified magic oil" with a reference number so that when they do identify it later I can open the book and tell them what they need to know without me having to keep another set of notes.

Of course, I also run with full transparency because I think that there is nothing of worth lost and numerous gains in the simplicity of it, so I'm not concerned that the players could use the reference to find out what the item does for themselves.

This mirror-list system is also really helpful when they get around to valuing and dividing their loot.

That's another group difference. We don't divide loot, and I tell the players the value of items their characters find, so the player tracking the party's wealth can handle questions like "can we afford to buy spare armor before we head into those caves that are probably full of black pudding?" without my assistance.

The players also do their own mapping...but I also have a map, either in a module or drawn out by me ahead of time, with lots more info. I've learned the hard way I'm incapable of designing dungeons on the fly without having one room eventually try to occupy the same space as another.

I find the key to on the fly dungeon design lies not in being able to keep track of measurements and distances and such, but in simply choosing smaller locations for use as dungeons (a single tomb with a half dozen rooms arranged around a cross-shaped hall, rather than a sprawling complex), or in going to the other end of the scale by having the dungeon consist of small, simple areas of a few rooms each and the passages between them being "to A, 200 feet" rather than fully drawn in.

As for the logging, I do that as DM and post it online each week in point form. As player I've tried keeping such records in the past but I've found myself spending so much time writing I'm losing touch with what's happening; and I don't want to stop proceedings while I write it all down.

I've helped my players learn how to take notes efficiently - you don't write out the whole of events and all their details, just a brief point that will help you recall the rest when you read it later. And as for the timing of writing these notes, it is exclusively during times where the note-taker's character is at lesser participation (such as jotting down a bit about that happened in the last hour of the session while the players of the rogue and wizard are working out how to deal with a magical trap in the party's way).

That said, players are on their own hook for recording potentially useful story information; the online log merely shows what they did, not (in most cases) what they know.

Another point where I avoid the adversarial approach - I don't consider the player forgetting a detail of what happened last week fair cause to treat their character as having forgotten what likely just happened in their life, so I am proactive about reminding players of anything they seem to have forgotten that their character probably wouldn't have.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Question: how would you and-or your crew handle it if someone brought in an otherwise perfectly decent character who happened to have wisdom 5 and was properly played to it - frequently making the wrong move at the wrong time, never thinking through any consequences whatsoever, often acting on complete whim and fancy including wandering off now and then, and so on - would this even be allowed to exist in your game?

Yeah, he's called Tiberius Stormwind, from Draconia, and he got booted off Critical Role...