D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[hawkeyefan]

But if they know what they're getting into ahead of time, what does it hurt? I've had people tell me that one of the reasons they were interested was because I restrict races. Having every race under the sun doesn't work for some people, just like having every race under the sun is a requirement for others.

I think personal preference and vision is justification enough.

Yeah, I've said if everyone's on board with a restriction, then there's no issue. I have enjoyed plenty of games as both player and GM that had restrictions in place.

When there is a conflict, then I don't think personal preference is justification because you have two opposing personal preferences, right? So which takes precedence? Which is more important? That's the question.

For many, the default is to side with the GM. Give them final say as the primary creator of the setting. The OP suggests ways to allow the player what they'd like in a way that does not disrupt the setting.

I've suggested a more collaborative approach so that perhaps it's the group that decides how to proceed. That the GM not be the sole source of input to the setting. Or, alternatively, to simply place the player's desire ahead of one's own stance as GM. That letting Mikey play a dragonborn and be happy is more important than my sense that dragonborn have no place in the setting.

What it comes down to is they think you're doing it wrong.

No one comes out and says it because they know they're not supposed to say that so instead the whole argument gets presented as questioning a lot of assumptions. If only you understood there was another way to do things.

Why should X be the case? The only real assumption here is that the way people may run and play games are based on unreflective assumptions.

I don't think anyone's doing it wrong. I just think that, like the OP, I did things one way for a long time. Then I tried something different and all the possible pitfalls I imagined were proven to be just that.....imaginary. The new way I did things was an improvement for me.

So I think it's a good thing for GMs to be open to the input of players through both their desires about what's available in game, and also just as collaborators in a shared activity.

For the most part, I think just about everyone has agreed that there's more than one way to do things, and when there is an issue the first step is to discuss it to see if a solution can be found.

 

[Umbran]

Does Cure Wounds work on wood ? And even if it did, how does it heal the other two components of the body of the warforged ? I know, "because it's magic" but sometimes that does not float for one's sentiment of verisimilitude.

To quote Phlogiston Calx, my warforged wizard (Transmuter) - "Why of course healing magic will work on me! Were you of the mistaken position that it has anything to do with the materials of which the body is composed? As if the magic knows the construction of tissues when you do not? Nonsense! Healing magics enter the body through the Spirit (or "soul" as some might call it), and brings the body to wholeness in a holistic manner, based on the Spiritual pattern present. My alchemical core would be inactive except for the present of Spirit bound to it, producing the same effect as for you who are born with them...."

Verisimilitude of magical activity is really up to you, not the ruleset.

 

[Oofta]

Sure, I get that. Again, I'm not actually against restricting options.

Let's look at the "No Evil PCs" rule. Most often this rule is in place to avoid disruptive play of some kind.... intraparty conflict or perhaps evil deeds that people prefer not to play out. That kind of thing.
...

Just one note on this that I didn't mention.

I don't ban evil PCs because of potential intraparty conflict. I ban evil PCs because I wouldn't enjoy a game that had truly evil PCs as much. That's it. I assume there are other red lines pretty much every DM has, it's just a matter of personal choice at the table. Some people are perfectly fine with evil PCs, but I've quit games because evil PCs were allowed or even encouraged, even though there was no intraparty conflict. It's just not my cup of tea. Some people are perfectly okay with a PC that swears enough to make a sailor blush. Others would find it objectionable.

At some point some decisions are just a matter of preference.

 

[Lyxen]

To quote Phlogiston Calx, my warforged wizard (Transmuter) - "Why of course healing magic will work on me! Were you of the mistaken position that it has anything to do with the materials of which the body is composed? As if the magic knows the construction of tissues when you do not? Nonsense! Healing magics enter the body through the Spirit (or "soul" as some might call it), and brings the body to wholeness in a holistic manner, based on the Spiritual pattern present. My alchemical core would be inactive except for the present of Spirit bound to it, producing the same effect as for you who are born with them...."

To which my cleric would reply: "Then why doesn't it work on undead or actual constructs, they have bodies too, and you are, after all a construct, so it does not work on you, just cast mending on yourself..."

Verisimilitude of magical activity is really up to you, not the ruleset.

It's actually both, it depends on how the ruleset provides explanations which align with the verisimilitude one's table is expecting. Whereas the ruleset of 3e (way more complex) sort of worked for us, the simpler one of 5e does not. Same people, different rulesets, different results.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Who said "Buck stops here" means "fiat declaration"? Oh right. Any time a DM makes a decision that a player could possibly disagree with it's "fiat declaration" and bad-wrong-fun. I keep forgetting that. Silly me.

Okay. So what does it mean? If I'm so incorrect, educate me rather than mocking me.

Because, despite saying what you've said here, you seem pretty clearly to me to be saying "when the DM says something, you as a player should put up, shut up, or get up."

So. What does the buck stopping with the DM mean? What message am I supposed to get from this other than submission to DM authority whenever any disagreement occurs?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Just one note on this that I didn't mention.

I don't ban evil PCs because of potential intraparty conflict. I ban evil PCs because I wouldn't enjoy a game that had truly evil PCs as much. That's it. I assume there are other red lines pretty much every DM has, it's just a matter of personal choice at the table. Some people are perfectly fine with evil PCs, but I've quit games because evil PCs were allowed or even encouraged, even though there was no intraparty conflict. It's just not my cup of tea. Some people are perfectly okay with a PC that swears enough to make a sailor blush. Others would find it objectionable.

At some point some decisions are just a matter of preference.

Sure, I thought I mentioned this by "evil deeds people don't want to play out"...it's a matter of the content of the game and what some may consider questionable. That kind of thing is, in my opinion, important, so I don't have a problem with that at all.

So let's say I was starting a new campaign and was perfectly fine with allowing evil PCs, and then one of my players said that they weren't really down with that. I'd almost certainly add the restriction for that game.

 

[Oofta]

Okay. So what does it mean? If I'm so incorrect, educate me rather than mocking me.

Because, despite saying what you've said here, you seem pretty clearly to me to be saying "when the DM says something, you as a player should put up, shut up, or get up."

So. What does the buck stopping with the DM mean? What message am I supposed to get from this other than submission to DM authority whenever any disagreement occurs?

It means the same thing that the DMG says. I run the game and make the final call. Obviously I listen to my players and even if I decide what they are proposing doesn't work then I'll try to work something out. Basically "You can't do that, but what are you trying to accomplish?" Then we try to work something out. But yes, I have the final say.

In all my years of DMing I think I've had 2 instances where I made a decision that the player really disagreed with and quit the game. In one case, they wanted to play a half dragon half vampire with a cape the billowed in the nonexistent wind. In another the player wanted to play an evil PC.

So if a player says "I want to play a half dragon half vampire" what would you do? Or when it comes to ruling the player says they run so fast they create a Flash tornado? I really don't see how saying no in either of these cases is not just standard in most games. It's been the way it's worked for every DM I've ever had.

 

[Faolyn]

To which my cleric would reply: "Then why doesn't it work on undead or actual constructs, they have bodies too, and you are, after all a construct, so it does not work on you, just cast mending on yourself..."

They don't have souls.

And warforged aren't constructs. They're humanoids.

 

[Lyxen]

Butting in here, in one of the games I'm running, I gave a tiny paragraph on each of my allowed races. One player expanded the small amount of info I had on tieflings (not a race per se but something that some children of any race turn into when they reach puberty; they live in the woods and have a found-family society) into a quite very large amount of very interesting and unique material. Same setting, the

That's good, but still an infinitesimal part of the word's creation, much less of the running of it.

In fact, when I wrote up this particular world, I specifically asked the players if there was anything they wanted or didn't want in the world and built the world around what they say. Sure, some of them said they didn't have any particular desires, but others did. When I was drawing a map for it--which I should really finish or redo, one of these days--they kept saying things like "ooh, you should add this in the blank spot there!"

See above.

I was working on a cosmos that as it turned out is not too dissimilar to the 4e cosmos (which I knew nothing about at the time). I mentioned how my versions of the Feywild and Shadowfell has lots of "lost cities" in it. Another player wrote up an entire lost city for me. And she keeps talking about it.

I don't know if this counts, but of my DMs is running the same adventure for two separate groups. My player "inadvertently" caused a riot (bless her well-meaning, chaotic neutral little heart). The DM so liked my reasons for the riot that kept he had it happen in the other group's game.

And a DM liked the speech that I wrote for a trial in our Odyssey of the Dragonlords, and posted it and shared it with the community, just as my DM received contributions from other players on other campaigns. But that's again from PLAYING the game, not preparing it from a player's perspective and again a very small part of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the principle, but surely you can see that, compared to everything a DM does to actually run the game, these contributions are really small.

It's not disrespectful for a player to add things to a world. D&D is a game of collaborative storytelling, after all. And it shows how much they're invested in the world. If the players just accept the world as-is, then it quite possibly means they don't care about it all that much. It's just another place to adventure in. But when they make stuff up for it, add their own things to it, have a say in how it's built--then it becomes their home.

There are many other ways to make the world feel like home for the players. Our usual pantheon is made of the characters from a previous mega-campaign, those who did not die and managed to ascend to godhood. In a sense, it's a huge part of them which is in the game, but they did not do much more than playing these characters in the previous campaign. And it's not a criticism, it's just perfectly in line between their expectations as players and what they expect of their DMs.

Players also feel at home if they feel the world reacting to their actions as PCs, or having a life of its own, and again this is from playing the game.

 

[Lyxen]

They don't have souls.

So magical healing only on things which have souls ? Where does this come from ? And undead have souls, actually, at least the intelligent ones.

And warforged aren't constructs. They're humanoids.

You are taking things from the wrong direction. 5e decreed that they are humanoids so that its simple system could accommodate them as player races when Eberron was rebooted for it. But whenever their author created them, with a rulese with more nuances, he specifically wrote: "Warforged are constructs with the living construct subtype". So this is what they are for us, and it corresponds much better to what we know of them. And it made them cool and special at the time.

Don't confuse the world explanation with the specific implementation of a ruleset. For us, it's way better to have warforged as constructs in our games, and it does not cause a problem since they are not PCs (at least none were in the two Eberron campaigns that we have run so far under 5e).