D&D 5E When lore and PC options collide…

[hawkeyefan]

I'll have to let my players know they can't be creative because I'm such a control freak that doesn't want a kitchen sink for my home campaign.

You read quite a bit into my comments. I didn't say anything about you, nor did I advocate for "kitchen sink" settings.

How much difference does race really make anyway? Every race is just a mirror of our own with a few extra bits and bobs tacked on while applying a mask. Creativity doesn't come from a rule that says you can walk across difficult terrain because you're a water genasi, it comes from the motivations of the PCs, the backgrounds we've created together and what they do in game.

This argument can also be made verbatim to argue against restricting races.

Some of my players are quite creative. Some just want to join in the fun and roll some dice. I always encourage creativity, but yes you have to live within constraints. It might be cool to a player if their PC could shoot laser beams from their eyes and if they want to fluff their sorcerer's scorching ray like that, cool. But you still have to use that spell slot and it's still going to follow the rules of the scorching ray spell.

So laser eyes are cool, but like a gnome on Athas breaks things?

There will always be limits to what a PC can do unless you're just playing "let's narrate an adventure". Allowing any race or character doesn't change that.

I don't disagree with that!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not really. Any sort of creative process is in large part guided by personal preferences.

And ignoring your friends' personal preferences because they game has taught us that this one guy is more important than anyone else!

 

[overgeeked]

I have not found that... most kids (teens and preteens maybe even early 20's) normally want to do something weird out the gate I need to figure out how to do... older player (especially those from TSR editions) I have found are more likely to figure 1 'optimal' action and just try to spam it.

It’s not about age, in my experience, rather about their experience with gaming. The people who’ve played old-school games will be more likely to try shenanigans. Talk about limitations breeding creativity. You have a 10-foot pole, 50 feet of rope, and five days of food and water. Go. Whereas players who haven’t tend to find answers on the character sheet and in the rules.

this one I am 50 50 on... I have had MANY fights that I figured my set up was full of cool things and no one used them... but also plenty of times I give a 2 sentence description we roll initiative and a player will hit me with "Hey are there any ____ near me" and CREATE there own interesting terrain.

Yep. Anything that’s reasonably there is there. But it won’t be as reliable as a sword swing or a cantrip nor will it do as much damage, so it’s ignored by less experienced players.

yeah me and my group are not big on timer/deadlines... if it comes up once or twice we will roll with it but after that we normally are like "It can wait"

For me, verisimilitude is king. A group of adventurers who sits on their hands while the big bad slaughters people are generally seen as just as evil as the big bad.

I don't get it... have you tried using the strixhaven rules? they have some great 'relationship' rules I find new players like to putz with.

Just like the answer isn’t on your character sheet, the answer isn’t more rules. If the players don’t care, I’m not going to port in subsystem after subsystem to try to make them.

I already tried that and it didn’t work. Unlimited inspiration. The optional rule for awarding inspiration for thematic play and the theme was swashbuckling adventure. Handed out advantage for anything that wasn’t line up and smash. And they still just lined up and smashed. It’s one of the main reasons I dropped 5E and went back to older editions and other games.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not really. Any sort of creative process is in large part guided by personal preferences.

If it's a creative decision, I'd say it was meaningful to the setting. Something like the lack of true clerics on Krynn prior to the War of the Lance, or the need to select Preserver or Defiler as a wizard on Athas.

But if there's nothing more to it than "no orcs because I don't like them" then no, I'd say that's not creative at all. It may be true, and it's a perfectly valid preference to have... but it ain't creative.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If it's a creative decision, I'd say it was meaningful to the setting. Something like the lack of true clerics on Krynn prior to the War of the Lance, or the need to select Preserver or Defiler as a wizard on Athas.

But if there's nothing more to it than "no orcs because I don't like them" then no, I'd say that's not creative at all. It may be true, and it's a perfectly valid preference to have... but it ain't creative.

It just isn't that clear cut. When a person starts to create a setting, of course their mind is drawn to things they like, and they're far more likely to write them into the setting than things they don't like. What exists is defined by the lore, but what lore gets created is guided by personal preferences in the first place.

 

[Minigiant]

Maybe I'm not understanding you, because it seems to me that lore is all three of those things. Themes are created via lore. Style is created via lore. Preferences come out in the lore you create. What am I not getting about what you are saying there?

My point is theme, lore, style, and preference are separate thingd. You can tie them together or not.

For example, you can say your has a Greek Mythology theme. But the lore can be altered to offer all kinds of races.

Kratos is from a Greek Mythology themed IP. But the lore has him in Norseland. And Marvels Thor interacts with Greek gods. Same with American Gods. Or Dresden Files.

So if a player wanted to player a dwarf in your Greek came, the DM can't say just "But this is a Greek mythology game". Because there are Greek mythology games with Norse mythology theme aspects. They have to say " this is a Greek Mythology themed game and Norse mythology is not part of the lore. It only has Greek mythology lore."

 

[Aldarc]

So, a Cavalier then. Could be, but I still see her as a non-religious Paladin.

She's certainly close enough to justify Paladins existing in the setting, which was the original point.

Or a Knight. Not everything needs be expressed in strictly in D&D terms.

 

[Oofta]

...
Better to view the discussion assuming reasonable parties. A compromise can’t be found, so what do we do?

In those instances, I personally choose the player.

But that's the whole crux of the argument. That compromise doesn't really mean compromise, it seems to always mean "do whatever the player wants". Is the DM less important than an individual player? What do the rest of the players desire?

The DM puts far more work and effort into running the campaign than anyone else. If you don't have a DM you don't have a game, meanwhile players come and go for various reasons. I have a player who, sadly, will have his last game with us in a couple of weeks because they're moving to Kentucky. Should I have let him play something I didn't care for that didn't fit with the lore of my world because he asked me to?

If I created a new world with every campaign I ran and if campaigns only lasted for a few months, I'd probably be more flexible. But I've run the same campaign world for decades. It has history and deep lore, most of it created or influenced by what PCs did in previous campaigns. I run campaigns from 1-20 so it can take years to finish since generally we can only do monthly games. As DM I make the final call. Just like every other D&D game I've ever played with other people's campaigns. If that means I can't play a tabaxi in their campaign, so be it. I'll play something else, the DM has far more invested than me so I owe them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The creators of the setting made a decision. They're the ones who created it. They get to do that. Just like they decided no guns. You not liking their decision in no way makes it a bad one. Though I agree about kender. They are a blot on D&D.

They created it - and they aren't playing at this table. So tough.

It's either, or. Either they followed the constraints or they try to subvert them. Trying to subvert them means they're not following the constraints.

No. Trying to subvert the constraints is accepting them. It is literally following the constraints. When, in the example earlier in the thread, the monk used silver body piercings to make a silver weapon because they weren't allowed to start with a silver weapon they were completely 100% accepting the constraints as given. Malicious compliance is still compliance.

And when the very same group of players were given more sensible guidelines in a non-adversarial manner they worked with the guidelines.

LOL. I have to beg my 5E players to do anything more than smash the buttons on their character sheets. I'd literally pay real money to find a few creative players. No one seems interested. It's all cookie-cutter builds and button smashing. That's about as far from of creativity as you can get.

DM by committee doesn't work. I've tried it many times.

DM by committee doesn't work. Seeing your role as more akin to a Master of Ceremonies and first among equals than the Master Of The Game does. And it is a big part of what produces creative players. In my experience both getting players to be creative and getting them to just button smash is almost entirely down to the DM and what the DM rewards. The player I thought was my least creative and most likely to button mash has in both his last two sessions turned Create Water into the most valuable spell in the party's arsenal in different ways.

I think the person who does 99% of the work should get a bit more leeway. Weird that you think that makes them entitled.

And I think that if you're doing 99% of the work then that's not only you but you are actively hogging the ability to have input. No wonder you complain your players button mash. It's the only reliable source of input you leave them.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So you removed sorcerer and gave wizard its toys.

Now, I removed the CLASS of Sorcerer and made is a subclass of Wizard, and ONLY that subclass gets "its toys" as you put it.

FWIW, WotC already decided to give away "its toys" in TCoE...