Even before the pandemic, I almost exclusively played online. This means applying for games. DMs present their pitches (or, rarely, players present theirs and hope a DM likes it enough to pick it up). I filtered through a much, much larger number than that dozen I quoted, skipping over any that were either (a) clearly not for me, so there was no point in applying to begin with, or (b) clearly not interested in what I was looking for. I also did what I could to select game pitches that were compatible with the fluff and crunch of my choices for race, background, class, etc.*
That still left quite a few games, where I would ask up front if the DM was open to testing content I had designed, explicitly saying that I would welcome changes (even, if truly necessary, some before play even got started, though the goal was to try the thing as close to what I wrote, since I can't truly call it "balanced" unless I test it). Having already preselected against those who would oppose such things on principle, most (though not all) did not reject it out of hand, but several said something like "let me think about it" and then came back a day or two later with some variation on "no, sorry, no homebrew I didn't write." Among the dozen or so that remained, only two or three actually demonstrated that they had read my work (one asked if I was willing to drop a ribbon-y feature that they felt could be unbalanced for their specific campaign, since it was focused on jungle exploration; another said they liked one of the optional homebrew spells at the end of the document and appreciated the effort I put into selecting art and proofreading it, but had no further criticism). Zero of the dozen-ish DMs that got to this point of sounded like they'd want the kind of play I look for, had a compatible pitch, (allegedly) open to homebrew, and (claimed to have) actually read and approved it, actually did so; I was accepted into none of their games.
And, like I said, this was already after filtering through many, many more games that were either clearly not a good fit, explicitly rejecting things I wanted (e.g. "no feats," which is way commonll, much to my chagrin), or not even willing to consider homebrew content of any kind unless it came from the DM herself.
*If you consider it relevant, I was intending to play a silver dragonborn dragon sorcerer, gold bloodline, with some kind of "comes from old-money families but didn't inherit any of it" background, inspired by a couple cool images I saw online. My homebrew, a Silver Pyromancer PrC, explicitly forbids multiclassing to or from Warlock, for both thematic and balance reasons, so my interest was to play a pure Sorcerer other than those five levels.
Perhaps it is the fog of memory, but I distinctly remember some folks in the "exotic races" thread (for example) using some rather...strident...language for any player who has the temerity to want to play a non-"core four" race. I won't name names for the sake of not stirring up old drama. But there were some folks who got stern mod responses for it. That, to me, speaks of a testiness that goes well beyond simple stuff.
Okay. Now how do we refactor this for the online group search, since as noted, that's basically always how I have had to look for games even before the pandemic, but now
most folks have to look for games this way.
TBH this at least sounds irrelevant to what I'm talking about, so I don't have much to say about it.
One. Out of several dozen games I examined and about a dozen games I applied for, exactly one had constructive criticism, and that one was only to avoid a potentially theme-disruptive ribbon feature. At 5th level, meaning character level 10 at the lowest, my Silver Pyromancer gets a ribbon feature, immunity to disease. That DM thought that this ribbon might be actually powerful or unbalanced in a game focused on jungle exploration, and thus asked if I was okay with removing it. Seeing as it's mostly a fluff feature, I was comfortable doing so; it is of course sad to drop a ribbon, but I had no desire to disrupt a campaign premise.
In every case, including that one, I was clear that adjustments the DM considered appropriate were cool, but that starting out more or less as I wrote it would be nice so I could get good playtest info. I worked pretty hard to keep the features in line with, but distinct from, the features of official classes, races, feats, etc. I'm confident it is already pretty well-balanced, but confirmation is always a nice addition on top of such confidence...and if that confidence proves wrong, I
want to fix it, not dig in my heels. I genuinely believe in serious playtesting.
Well, as stated, I did everything I could to filter out DMs who wouldn't be interested from the word "go." Hence why I spent several months trying to find a game and applied to such a large number of them (mostly on GitP and Myth-Weavers). Even with those efforts, I came up completely empty-handed. This wasn't a casual effort, I was really sincere about trying to find a game that would work and had plenty of respectful conversations about it. Ultimately it never worked out. That it failed to do so despite the amount of time and effort I put in is what led me to conclude that yes, my initial perception (based on forum discussions like this) was on fact pretty accurate. 5e DMs are overall very traditionalist, often extremely so, and will rather pointedly refuse or ignore most "optional" rules, unless they personally deeply love those rules (most of them being of the "make days deadlier, rests harder and less frequent, and resources generally restricted" variety). Good luck even getting them to use "official" third-party content (as in, published by a professional company like Drop Dead Studios or Goodman Games), let alone player written homebrew...but they'll be totally cool introducing their own homebrew, occasionally without even drawing attention to it until it becomes relevant.
In case anyone actually cares what homebrew I wanted to test,
here it is. (Hopefully the images load correctly; they were
very slow to load on my phone.) As stated in the opening section, it is directly inspired by the Silver Pyromancer PrC from (3rd edition) Eberron. I am relatively proud of it, in the sense that I think I did a good job making it, covered both the thematic and mechanical bases that I should have, and that it only really needs small tweaks or adjustments to be a solid, focused but not overpowered, option for players to use. The spells are mostly of my own design, though some are inspired by actual spells from 3.5e. (I also neglected to include the Artificer as an explicit "you can do this if you like" option, but in theory they qualify eventually, once they get 3rd level spells. Not that I think very many people willingly play 5e's Artificer...)
Like I said. A disdain for "optional" rules is a gamer culture element I have detected in 5e DMs. Is that not what this statement is?
