Sword of Spirit
Legend
It occurs to me that an additional scenario would help unpack some of the things I sort of embedded into 3:
4. Your extended family is getting together for a traditional annual holiday gathering. It is decided that a one person will be the host for the gathering this year.
Is the host being a jerk if they set up the sorts of restrictions found in 1 and 2 above?
My answer, in contrast with my answers for 1 and 2 is yes.
The reason is that in this situation (as I meant to illustrate in 3) the host has no ownership over the activity. By (presumably general) agreement, they provide the venue that year. It is a family activity, and the family as a whole sets the expectations and rules.
Now, there are some exceptions to that. The host might reasonably request that no one bring illegal drugs, or that you don't bring you cat because their kids are allergic to it, or even that no one lets Uncle Frank have any alcohol because experience has shown that he's highly likely to get obnoxiously drunk and puke on the furniture.
But there is a fundamental difference with ownership of an activity in this case. Simply being invited to an activity does not grant you ownership of the activity. In the case of 1 and 2, this was an activity designed and planned by the host, and you were invited to participate if you so chose--but ownership of the activity remained with the host.
To tie these back to D&D, I think our experiences and opinions are (and we've already brought this up in some senses earlier in the thread) influenced by the nature of the gaming group. If the gaming group is a close knit group with fairly established members (more like a family), and the assumption is that whenever a new game is going to be played everyone is invited and it is "our" game, then it's going to be more like situation 4. I think some people are coming from an experience where that's the way D&D is for them. On the other hand, if there is simply a large pool of people (even if you are all at least casually friends) and most games that are run by one person in the group have players composed of a subset of that group, you have a different dynamic--especially (but not exclusively) if more than one game is going on. It's more like situations 1 and 2 in that case.
For my games, we tend to fall somewhere in the middle. There are enough people that anyone who is GMing (it's usually just me and one other person) can generally get buy-in from enough people to play any particular game we want to run. That doesn't mean we never have a flexible game, or that we don't ask people "which of these ideas do you want to play?" I've even set up a shared DMing game before. But the dynamics are such than when a GM does want to run a rather particular game, they decide where the ownership lies. "It's my baby, my rules," or "let's create our next game" are both valid approaches. It would be considered rather obnoxious for someone try to provide unwanted transformational suggestions (whether, "let's change the world" or "let me play this character that doesn't fit") when we are playing an "it's my baby" game. The issue being ownership of the game.
So what I'm getting is that some people just have zero interest in participating in activities where they aren't given ownership in the activity. Which is a perfectly valid preference, but given that there are plenty of others who actually enjoy participating in someone else's idea (and indeed, would find the experience diluted if ownership of the activity were more broad), I think it's rather unfortunate to assume that those who do run such activities are inherently being selfish, jerks, close-minded, etc.
(In the case of those who haven't already experienced both types of activities, I would suggest giving both a try--but everyone should feel fine with whichever preferences they develop. That's one of the main reasons for starting the thread, to encourage people to consider the possibility that they might actually enjoy something that they think they won't.)
4. Your extended family is getting together for a traditional annual holiday gathering. It is decided that a one person will be the host for the gathering this year.
Is the host being a jerk if they set up the sorts of restrictions found in 1 and 2 above?
My answer, in contrast with my answers for 1 and 2 is yes.
The reason is that in this situation (as I meant to illustrate in 3) the host has no ownership over the activity. By (presumably general) agreement, they provide the venue that year. It is a family activity, and the family as a whole sets the expectations and rules.
Now, there are some exceptions to that. The host might reasonably request that no one bring illegal drugs, or that you don't bring you cat because their kids are allergic to it, or even that no one lets Uncle Frank have any alcohol because experience has shown that he's highly likely to get obnoxiously drunk and puke on the furniture.
But there is a fundamental difference with ownership of an activity in this case. Simply being invited to an activity does not grant you ownership of the activity. In the case of 1 and 2, this was an activity designed and planned by the host, and you were invited to participate if you so chose--but ownership of the activity remained with the host.
To tie these back to D&D, I think our experiences and opinions are (and we've already brought this up in some senses earlier in the thread) influenced by the nature of the gaming group. If the gaming group is a close knit group with fairly established members (more like a family), and the assumption is that whenever a new game is going to be played everyone is invited and it is "our" game, then it's going to be more like situation 4. I think some people are coming from an experience where that's the way D&D is for them. On the other hand, if there is simply a large pool of people (even if you are all at least casually friends) and most games that are run by one person in the group have players composed of a subset of that group, you have a different dynamic--especially (but not exclusively) if more than one game is going on. It's more like situations 1 and 2 in that case.
For my games, we tend to fall somewhere in the middle. There are enough people that anyone who is GMing (it's usually just me and one other person) can generally get buy-in from enough people to play any particular game we want to run. That doesn't mean we never have a flexible game, or that we don't ask people "which of these ideas do you want to play?" I've even set up a shared DMing game before. But the dynamics are such than when a GM does want to run a rather particular game, they decide where the ownership lies. "It's my baby, my rules," or "let's create our next game" are both valid approaches. It would be considered rather obnoxious for someone try to provide unwanted transformational suggestions (whether, "let's change the world" or "let me play this character that doesn't fit") when we are playing an "it's my baby" game. The issue being ownership of the game.
So what I'm getting is that some people just have zero interest in participating in activities where they aren't given ownership in the activity. Which is a perfectly valid preference, but given that there are plenty of others who actually enjoy participating in someone else's idea (and indeed, would find the experience diluted if ownership of the activity were more broad), I think it's rather unfortunate to assume that those who do run such activities are inherently being selfish, jerks, close-minded, etc.
(In the case of those who haven't already experienced both types of activities, I would suggest giving both a try--but everyone should feel fine with whichever preferences they develop. That's one of the main reasons for starting the thread, to encourage people to consider the possibility that they might actually enjoy something that they think they won't.)
