D&D 5E We Would Hate A BG3 Campaign

[Campbell]

Um, to get off my hobby horse for a second, World of Warcraft most definitely has dwarves?

Not in the Horde and that is what matters. Lok'tar Ogar!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you are going to invoke that fact that EGG allowed any race for PC's in his early games; Then you have to acknowledge the opinion he formed about allowing any race for PC's based on those early experiences.

Gygax had a lot to say about this on p.21 of the AD&D DMG:

'The Monster as a Player Character'

Some cliff notes:







D&D came out in 1974, by 1979 EGG certainly came to believe that GM's imposing restrictions on player character options for their campaigns was an absolutely acceptable practice.

Dave never said or apparently thought that, and even if Gary eventually let his lesser side have that argument by that point we had all learned to completely ignore whatever he said (and I think he was actually happy with that, despite whatever he happened to write in the DMG one month in 1978). Gary was definitely no model of consistency! I still say, the spirit of the game was always 'kitchen sink', bring it in, try it out, and only argue against it if there is some solid reason. Like, I understand matters of taste, decency, etc. in terms of what is allowed in games. I can grok (if not share) @EzekielRaiden and his dislike of evil PCs as a PHILOSOPHICAL position and in terms of his argument he has problems GMing for them.

Honestly, everyone's tastes should be considered. I do think a lot of this is just GM's feeling privileged to impose their tastes though in many cases. There's rarely any more coherent reason than that for it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

well it's common sense. You either have a predetermined set of rules or you have Anarchy. The rules can be adjusted along the way but demanding that everyone gets to change them at will is ...well...."anarchy". This might be ok for some tables but for most it's just not going to work. How is a DM supposed to prep and prepare and do all the work of creating a game if everybody with an axe to grind, a fantasy to live or who just believes no one should ever give them rule's or consequences to follow, can just tell them what they have to do. I'd just rather not run any games than deal with those people.

Nonsense.

 

[Campbell]

Who are these players that are demanding to play options that have been explicitly mentioned as off the table? I'm all personally in favor of curating a list of options to focus a game down further, but like rhetoric matters here. The vast majority of people, including people who think there should be more give and take on this score, are pretty reasonable at the table. Most of the scope of this thread comes down to philosophical differences between approaches to running the game. Most of us here run games.

I also think the greater subtext matters here because the examples being used are almost always things that are newer to the game and well-liked by younger players (and flavor reasons). It can often come across as antagonistic towards fans of those things when it seems like people want to excise from the larger game. It might be useful to use other examples, including ones that held as sacred. Say elves. Can we agree to burn them in a fire?

 

[mamba]

Who are these players that are demanding to play options that have been explicitly mentioned as off the table?

if you haven't encountered at least one of them in this thread, I suggest you start reading it

Say elves. Can we agree to burn them in a fire?

sure, throw them on the pyre the with the dragonborn, I really do not care which race you banish ore why

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

"Hey everyone. I was thinking of having some friends over to throw a huge Hawaiian luau party. Now I know Mary is a vegan, Walid is Muslim, Harold is Jewish and Cynthia has allergy to pineapple, so I guess you guys just don't come? The rest of you, come on over to par-tay!"

See, my response would be, "Well, pineapple is vegan, Walid can grill a burger, and share one with Harold. Cynthia OTOH is just SOL, we all secretly despise her and the whole idea of a luau was actually just engineered to keep her away!

 

[Micah Sweet]

And, I will note, I openly and unreservedly hate the entire first paragraph of this section, and have ever since we first saw it. Because it is a blatant contravention of the claimed "D&D is a toolkit" claim--and actively working to suppress entirely legitimate player interests.

If D&D is actually a toolkit, NO race is guaranteed. Not elves, dwarves, halflings...or even humans. Dwarves don't exist in two of the most popular fantasy video game franchises of all time (WoW and TES, though in the latter they are extinct rather than totally non-existent). Neither do halflings. The second most popular fantasy MMO doesn't have dwarves (except as a variant of halflings!), and the (arguable) third most popular barely has dwarves and doesn't have elves. Humans are the only thing that even approaches being a given, and even they aren't truly guaranteed.

But no, the authors just had to enshrine the Core Four as present in every universe and ghettoize the rest. Gotta get those "demn kids, get off my lawn" points, apparently.


Good. It should never have been there in the first place. Instead of wasting page space on bull$#¡† Traditional Gameplay Enforcement, they could have actually treated 5e like a toolkit. Could have shown how different slates of races can be used to emphasize themes, support different player interests, and/or explore social interactions between genuinely different physiologies or lifespans etc. But of course we couldn't have actually useful guidance in the core books. That would be bad...somehow.


Though it is false to claim, as many have done in this thread, that such things are the one and only way to achieve such ends. I have been specifically, without prompting, thanked by my players privately for the internal consistency and understandability of the world we run in, on separate occasions by two different players. I do not use hard "no absolutely not you cannot play that and will not have any opportunities to discuss it." But that doesn't mean the world of Jewel of the Desert is some timey-wimey ball of stuff.


Ahh, gotta love the catch-22. It's straight up "you must have 10 years experience in the field to get an entry level job in the field," just applied to a D&D race. It's not as old as Tolkien, so it couldn't possibly have as many examples as Tolkien's work has generated, so it won't be allowed, meaning it won't get more new examples.

Self-perpetuating exclusion.


Hyperbole, much?

Viking hat DMing is all the rage today. With textual support, even! You're just finally noticing that that style of DMing is not well-liked by a lot of players.

Turns out the "my way or the highway" attitude eventually starts seeing more than a few people choose the highway. Shocking!


Couldn't put it better myself.

D&D was once about embracing the fantastic and the strange, about fueling imagination and derring-do, about effusive creativity. The freedom for DMs to explore any possible world they could conjure up, and players to find new ways to always ensure that no DM plan survived contact with them (for better or worse...)

Now? You will take only what is hard-line traditional and like it. Do not question the wisdom of the ancients. Know your place, player. Be thankful you get any game at all.

Thankfully, the pendulum has begun to swing back the other way.

Actually, all that really matters is the pendulum is allowed to swing at all. You keep pushing your agenda here though.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Dave never said or apparently thought that, and even if Gary eventually let his lesser side have that argument by that point we had all learned to completely ignore whatever he said (and I think he was actually happy with that, despite whatever he happened to write in the DMG one month in 1978). Gary was definitely no model of consistency! I still say, the spirit of the game was always 'kitchen sink', bring it in, try it out, and only argue against it if there is some solid reason. Like, I understand matters of taste, decency, etc. in terms of what is allowed in games. I can grok (if not share) @EzekielRaiden and his dislike of evil PCs as a PHILOSOPHICAL position and in terms of his argument he has problems GMing for them.

Honestly, everyone's tastes should be considered. I do think a lot of this is just GM's feeling privileged to impose their tastes though in many cases. There's rarely any more coherent reason than that for it.

I think all of this is right. There has always been a spirit of experimentation in the game. And weirdness! Enter rules for adding Boot Hill and gamma world to the game! Monks?!

All of that said, and understood…

You CANNOT tell me that if I want to have a Bronze Age theme I am a big heel for excluding flintlock pistols and the attendant gunner feat. My pals likes anime and wants to play that here. I get it. But the stuff I have been setting up and making is not that.

Hell I don’t even have platemail or long words because I want heroes in sandals and breastplate! Gorgons faces on shields, sandals and all. And we don’t have artificers.
(Totally hypothetical…I have a kitchen sink game I run with a lizard folk first mate on the ship, etc etc.).

We seem to be acting like one exclusion in one campaign is cutting this player off from their dreams and I don’t think it’s the case—-

We used to have heroes AND ALSO evil campaigns where evil was not prohibited!

Some of the fervor seems to be folks with limited options feeling its make or break do or die each time they play…and maybe it is closer to that than most people experience.

I think we try to come together if we can but honestly we cannot be responsible for everyone’s satisfaction.

My pals pal ran 3e/5e houseful mosh mash. I was “not interested” and did not waste my time hounding them to change the houserules. I self selected out and found what appeals to me elsewhere. A better fit.

Again, I just got done DMing a citrus person and may one day run barrier peaks (Goodman games version). So it’s not me. But I object to the philosophy that the DM cannot set parameters and have no idea what that precedent was.

The weird and experimental goes all the way back! The DM being pushed into including..whatever…is a more “modern take” maybe.

In my work I try to please people but know for sure the customer is not in fact always right.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"Hey everyone. I was thinking of having some friends over to throw a huge Hawaiian luau party. Now I know Mary is a vegan, Walid is Muslim, Harold is Jewish and Cynthia has allergy to pineapple, so I guess you guys just don't come? The rest of you, come on over to par-tay!"

I suppose it depends on how many of your friends this is in your strawman.

 

[Remathilis]

See, my response would be, "Well, pineapple is vegan, Walid can grill a burger, and share one with Harold. Cynthia OTOH is just SOL, we all secretly despise her and the whole idea of a luau was actually just engineered to keep her away!

It reminds me of the episode of the Office where Jim attempts to raise morale by throwing a birthday party for the person in whose birthday is next (Meredith) and then insists on getting a mint-chocolate chip ice cream cake because that's what HE likes (and Meredith is lactose intolerant). Likewise, a DM who doesn't consider their player's preferences is just ordering ice cream cake for themselves.