To me the problem is two fold:
First and fore most, I want to be the soul author of the setting. I don't like players doing my work for me, because what they come up with may not be as good as what I'd come up with. I never asked the player to do this. No one did. So it was an unwelcome addition.
But another reason, is that because he pushed these npc's into my campaign, he now also expected me to run these characters that he came up with. I run a homebrew campaign for a good reason; I don't like running other people's stories and characters, which is what this was. I want to retain ownership, because I have a special bond with the characters I come up with... not with the characters HE comes up with. And the other players had the same problem with it.
Running an npc that I created myself, means that I can weave them into the narrative with ease, and gradually reveal elements about them (and their role in the plot) to the players. Running someone elses characters in my plot, is a whole different story. I have to memorize their names, which is difficult, because I have certain rules that I adhere to when naming my npc's. I also have to memorize their backstory and personality, which is also difficult, since I did not create them. I do not have the same bond with them, as I have with characters I wrote myself.
What made it worse, is that he would then want to interact explicitly with these characters, and expect me to play them; Npc's that I specifically sidelined so they would not be involved in the plot. There are already plenty of characters for the players to interact with. I deliberately limit the amount of names my players need to memorize, by having only a few npc's take an active role in the story. Not every npc needs a name and a backstory, especially if the players are not meant to interact with them.
All of those are fair points, but there is an oddity standing out to me. Well, two at least.
1) You seem almost offended that he was so invested in your world that he was thinking up characters to put into it. Since your entire focus seems to be on how much of a bother it is to deal with, and not the content of the characters, I'm left to assume that they are perfectly fine characters, jut not yours. But... the reason that the art of Fanfiction exists is because people are so enthralled by the various worlds and characters that they desire to add to that story, or riff off of it.
2) Secondly... the part I bolded. You say that you have a special bond with the characters you create, that you run homebrew because you don't want to run other people's stuff... then you say the other players have the same problem.
But that doesn't make any sense. They don't create characters, they can't have a special bond to your characters in the way that you are saying, they aren't running homebrew worlds, they are playing in yours. So... do the other players not like these characters just because you don't like them and feel like you can't roleplay them? I don't understand what their objection is, because in terms of interacting with a character, it doesn't really matter to them who came up with the idea.
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If by rare you mean fairly common, you would be correct.
Oofta said they were rare. That he couldn't think of a single major disagreement in the last year and a half of gaming.
And no one challenged him on that, so I went forth with the information I've been presented with.
Just look at the druid wildshape threads. When wildshape + disintegration came up, I said that by RAW at 0 disintegrate triggered dusting the druid as he changed back. Reasonable conclusion. Many others said no, the damage carried over and the druid had to hit 0 in his regular form to be dusted. Also a reasonable conclusion. There's no middle ground there. You can't dust half the druid. Either it happens or it doesn't. There was a smaller 3rd faction that said that the druid never hit 0 before reverting, despite the text explicitly saying that the druid did, and therefore the dusting effect never triggered. Less reasonable, since it directly contradicted printed text.
If this came up in a game and you had people on both sides of the two reasonable positions, someone would need to make the decision as no compromise would be possible.
I'm sorry... why is no compromise possible? Just because the ruling needs to be made one way or the other doesn't mean there can be no compromise. Agreeing to abide by one decision or the other can, in itself, be a compromise.
And the idea that two reasonable people couldn't come to an agreement is just kind of insane to me, heck, it would only take "Yeah, it might work RAW, but I feel like permanently killing the druid for scouting as a bird is a bit too much man." and the other person agreeing for the argument to be settled. RAW doesn't need to be the reason they agree on a ruling.
I stated in that thread that for my game, I wouldn't dust the druid, because it didn't seem right to do that to a player since the wildshape ability was core and involved forms with low hit points, even at high levels. It turned out that I was correct on both fronts. When Sage Advice came out it agreed with me that by RAW the druid gets dusted when the wildshape hits 0, but RAI was for the druid to survive.
That's just one example of the many contentious rulings threads on this and other sites. While most threads do have minor quibbles, they also have a lot of major ones.
Oh look, even without reading this section first, I came to the same conclusion as you.
You and Me, Max, who argue incessantly, agree on a ruling. Yet you want me to believe that it is impossible for a group of people to come to an agreement without an outside force telling them "No, it shall be this way"?
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I don't understand how Chaosmancer can assert that groups can handle rules debates without a DM as final arbiter. I understand the thesis of group consensus, but there needs to be a referee, after all.
And, as
@Maxperson said, these rules questions are exceedingly common, and, at the table, require a DM to intervene as referee.
Might be hard to do without trespassing, but if you can, observe a playground at an elementary or middle school.
You'll see people playing soccer, football, basketball, four square, any number of games. And there are zero referees. None.
Next time you are at a large convention, check the board game room. Thousands upon thousands of board games get played, between complete strangers. Again, generally with no referees.
There is even a chance that when playing a game of DnD, one of these rules comes up that has two sides.... and everyone at the table is on the same side of the debate. Meaning there is no rules debate for the DM to referee.
I don't have a referee for most of my life. I still seem to do okay interacting and even sometimes disagreeing with other people. The idea that I am required to have a referee to decide things for me... that doesn't make sense.
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Game's still hers. That said, it'd be a rather foolish DM who misjudged her potential player base so badly as to design a setting and-or system that appealed to exactly none of them, and thus the odds of this happening are fairly close to zero.
Yet I could do this - propose a game that would get exactly no uptake from a player group - tomorrow if I wanted. All I'd need to do would be to say I'm using 4e D&D as the rules system and they'd most likely run away as fast as their little feet could carry 'em. Therefore, I'm not going to be so foolish as to make such a pitch (and note this is hypothetical in any case: I can't see myself ever wanting to run or play 4e).
What game?
I can sit at an empty table with my setting notes and dice, but there is no game going on.
You can tell me that the odds of that happening are nearly zero, but that doesn't change the cold hard facts at play. The game only exists if their are players to play it. If you sit down with books and binders stuffed full of notes and handcrafted terrain and a whole story in mind... and the rest of the seats are empty? There is no game. And the first thing you would do to fix that? You would look for people to play it.
Ideally the players are driving the action. The game as a whole, however, remains mine.
As with the example with the Queen vs the Canadian Parliament and her never-used authority to overrule it, I hold an authority over the game I'll likely never use: that being to simply shut it down. No player can do this.
Honestly?
Perhaps neither can the DM.
A DM leaves, declaring the game over. The players decide that no, it isn't, and keep running the game. Maybe with a new DM, maybe not. They can do that, and the game would be different, but it wouldn't be over.
The character, however, still has to fit within the setting.
Clerics and Paladins have to follow a deity. I have a long list of deities (about 70 at last count) already in place, along with noting that there's further deities of very foreign cultures that remain yet unknown in these parts. I have three types of Clerics - War, Normal, and Nature - and Paladins; each deity supports some or all of these.
Some cultures simply don't support traditional* Paladins. The wild Celt equivalents, for example, just don't generally do heavy armour, mounted combat, or Lawful pretty-much-anything; meaning that while a Paladin of Celtic origin could be done as a PC it certainly got its training (and said its vows) to a non-Celtic deity. Other cultures might not support some other classes, and while these are noted in the game-world write-ups there's usually ways to work around stuff if someone is really hell-bent on doing something that doesn't make sense for the culture.
* - I say traditional because I've expanded Paladin alignment possibilities from just LG to also include CG, LE and CE. They're still usually extremists, though.
Okay, so you are kind of just foisting your ideas of what a paladin is on them. I mean, Mounted Combat is about the last thing I'd think of with a Paladin character. At least until I got the spell. I don't really see what Armor has to do with anything, except I guess the Celtic equivalents in your world have a weaker military than the other people, since they aren't using equipment that might save their lives.
I mean, sure, people have to make sense for the world, but if you are defining things to the point of "People from this region won't use this equipment, and people with this class are required to use this equipment" then you are moving really far down the spectrum.
Yes, if it's something bone-simple such as what dice to roll when. If it's anything more complicated I usually defer to the DM.
Why?
Because you and the DM aren't on the same page about the rules? Or because the DM would get upset about you daring to tell someone else what the rules are? Honestly, the only time I step in when a player is explaining something is if I feel like they are doing a bad job of it.
Once one has done any amount of DMing, one's view toward the game as a whole changes. It's inescapable.
Seems to fill a lot of people with a lot of ego, but caring about the fun of other people, or worrying that the long term consequences of a ruling aren't somehow unique to DMs.
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This is a bit tangential to the issue, but how do my fellow ENWorlders handle NPCs authored in by players?
I've found that player retention over family and "friend" NPCs can be useful for relieving DM strain, but quickly becomes unfeasible if said NPC supposedly has access to goods or services which the player desires.
sigh
Of course we are going to say that it becomes infeasible if the NPC has access to things the players want. Because the idea of the players not trying to take every possible advantage no matter what has to be our default assumption, right?
I just run them like normal NPCs. If I'm unsure of somethings, then I might ask the author player some clarifying questions, but generally it isn't an issue. I don't find there is anything special about them.
Now, as a player, I've talked to me DM about certain... limits on the NPCs I write. For example, both times I've written a character who is married, I've told the DM that I have zero interest in them doing a subplot involving my character's wife cheating on them.
That story has zero interest for me, so I've told DMs not to do it. Which I think is rather fair.
