D&D 5E As a Player, why do you play in games you haven't bought into?

[Thomas Shey]

In ancient days, there were only four human player classes, the fighting-man, the magic-user, the cleric, and the thief. Having a unique character wasn't about choosing different player options during character creation. Of course, that's how the game has evolved and it certainly is that way for many gamers today. It's pretty common to want your character to be differentiated from the rest of the party in some way, even when this creates groups that potentially break the suspension of disbelief. ("What, no humans at all in this group? And everybody's skin tone is a color not found in nature, if not covered in fur? Okay.")

Part of Hussars frustration (I believe) is not just wanting an all-knights only campaign, but the worry that a significant chunk of his playing group will want to play against type. It would be easier to roll with if it was just one player. When everybody is "the exception" then nobody is and your theme is potentially lost. While I think he favors a too restrictive game for my tastes, I get that frustration.

Again, with the right group of friends, I can see an "all fighters" campaign where the players are encouraged to differentiate by background and personality rather than in-game character options. But that isn't the expected norm, and I'd want to make sure I'm communicating clearly with my group and that I get their honest and enthusiastic buy-in before getting too invested in the idea.

Yeah, I've referred to this as the tendency for some groups to devolve every player group into, frankly, kind of a freakshow. There's certainly a tendency in modern fiction for characters to run to being special snowflakes, but its honestly kind of jarring when it applies to every or even the majority of characters in a group, and its actually easier to discourage it at all than to do what can look a lot like playing favorites.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You can talk with people. "Most characters need to be knights, but there can be one or two exceptions." I have never seen this to be an issue in practice.

You've obviously never into the sequel where everyone wants the other players to play the normal ones. Or even when people begin to resent the fact the same people are always the ones who want to be the exception.

 

[matskralc]

Almost nobody walks into a game and says "I'm going to find out what this DM is allowing and then play something that doesn't fit that".

What actually happens is that they walk into a game saying "I want to be X". When they hear the DM say "in this world, you can't be X", they say to themselves "well, I want to be X, so I'll make X anyway and see if the DM just lets me do it." Perhaps they've done it before and the DM let them be X.

This is the kind of thing you're signing up for when you're playing with randos. I can't imagine doing that to anybody that I am friends with, nor can I imagine any of my friends doing that to me. We respect each other too much to disregard each other's preferences so cavalierly.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You've obviously never into the sequel where everyone wants the other players to play the normal ones. Or even when people begin to resent the fact the same people are always the ones who want to be the exception.

Yes, this has literally never been a problem for me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, this has literally never been a problem for me.

Trust me, its very much a real thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

In a knights of the round table game for instance, make them feel the pain of not being knights in that kind of society. Make it clear if they want to be the special snowflake they must prove thier knightly worth or forever relegated to the naughty word unwanted adventures that the knights dont want.

I use a mix of carrot and stick.

If special snowflake is allowed yeah they might have difficulties. Elves aren't popular on my world, I haven't banned one but pick a high elf you might have issues in certain areas.

Carrot part is if you have the right background you get advantage or even automatic success. Noble background and you want to stay the night in the palace sure. A scholar might get advantage in identifying runes or something.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

People in general I think need to be aware of things more.

If you get invited to a game if rugby and then get tackled don't complain you got tackled.

DM directly tells you what to expect session 0 don't complain.

I've gone as far as saying what to expect. Egypt game for example poison, insects, tombs, undead sand.

First adventure giant scorpions, skeletons in a tomb.

Oh, sure. I was only really commenting WRT the 'casual table' type gamers, which are generally just there to be with their friends, though they may be pretty gung-ho about playing. They aren't EVER going to a different game or sitting out, so when they are told to go with a theme, they may not be really on board with it, and yet have very legitimate interests in playing.
So, in some games, you would want to be more open, looser, in terms of what you demand, thematically. If its an invitational game where everyone was told what the theme is, and they have other regular play options, they should stick to the theme, or constructively suggest ways to make it more fun for them. Tossing out a Wizard for a low-magic game that isn't supposed to be full casters, not a horrible move, IF they're willing to take their option B. They should be flexible enough for that, or excuse themselves.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sigh, in my last pirate game, I handed the players three treasure maps, a ship and a short (20 ish page) set of rules for naval combat and running ships in D&D. They sold the ship, ignored the treasure maps, never read the rules and then declared they didn't know what the campaign was about.



I guess I wasn't explicit enough.

Did you tell them that the theme of the game was to explore via ship, seek treasure and fortune on the high seas, and generally play out a fantasy of dnd pirates?
If so, yeah, that's some bad players.
OTOH, only about half of players I've ever met, including those who also DM, are going to ever read a 20 page handout. Generally, people expect to understand the campaign from a conversation with the DM, not after doing homework.

DM wins all the time. End if the day if the player is to contrary that player just gets booted.

In your group, perhaps. In my groups, the group decides. Period. The DM makes calls during play, and outside of that they are on exactly equal footing with everyone else at the table. That holds when I'm the DM, when my friend who is kindof a pushover is DM, or when my other friend who has more of an old school mindset and came into the group thinking like you do is DM. Regardless of who is DM, the DM is no more or less likely to be booted than a PC, and we have booted a DM before, and continued the campaign without him.

In a knights of the round table game for instance, make them feel the pain of not being knights in that kind of society. Make it clear if they want to be the special snowflake they must prove thier knightly worth or forever relegated to the naughty word unwanted adventures that the knights dont want.

That's incredibly unpleasant. I don't think I'd want to even be in the same group as someone who behaved like that.

 

[FrozenNorth]

You just do have to realize that there are a nontrivial amount of people in this hobby who consider written handouts "homework" to one degree or another, and react to them more than a little hostilely. As such there's a degree of passive avoidance of doing that which is going to be hard to work against.

I can accept that. That is why in addition to a handout, the Session Zero is a walkthrough of issues that might be important (or interesting) to the players, as well as a hype session. Of course, to bring this back to Hussar’s point, this sometimes means that players don’t have time to finalize their characters, or they need time to digest the information before they make characters.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For me the key here is if the GM has a campaign premise, it is fair to expect players to work toward that premise. Now what fits the premise will range a lot depending on specifics. But I think the problem arises when a player thumbs their nose at the premise (whatever that may be). I like a lot of player freedom. But I make my character according to the premise of the setting or campaign (i.e. if gnomes don’t exist in the world, I don’t insist on playing a gnome, if the premise of the campaign is your are all outlaws’, I don’t make a paladin—unless there is a really good way for the paladin to fit that premise and the GM agrees to it).